Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship
An anonymous reader writes "As painful as February's big job cuts were, they're even more painful since many of those jobs are never coming back as U.S. employers in a wide range of industries move more and more jobs overseas. CNN has the story." Salon has a good piece detailing how job requirements are changing, asking more and more for less and less pay.
At our company we now have multiple college graduates working for under $10/hour. Of course we're in a small town. But yeesh!
Web designer having problem finding work, people across the globe collectively let loose a gasp of surprise.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Sure fire ways to make a living in the USA, providing the trend continues:
Farm. People have to eat. If americans can't afford the food, someone else can, there's always a buyer, if you can afford to set the right price. (Sound unethical? You're probably not a republican then)
Become an entertainer (something about americans dancing and singing on a stage works for extracting money from the pockets of everyone else in the world. As of yet americans still make what the world wants to buy in terms of image.)
Own an overseas company, employing locals for a pittance, and selling goods and services to anyone, anywhere who can still afford them. China looks like a good place to sell, it's got one of the few growing economies.
Go into politics. If americans can't afford your price for selling out your country, someone, somewhere will and hopefully you know how to keep your payments away from prying eyes, not that the public really cares anymore, but they might.
Cynical? Why not. You can't expect the current administration or house to insist upon a tariff on imported services, can you?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have no doubt that some have gone overseas, but without a doubt, the worst problem is the economy. No company is going to hire anyone until this mess with Iraq starts to straigten out. Once that happens though, look for mega job listings to start appearing. There has to be a lot of pent up demand out there considering that everyone has been stalled for a couple of years now.
That's pretty surprising. My company is raking in the money once again after a small but not deadly slow-down, and three more job descriptions for engineers just went out today.
Humanity is so ridiculous in its endless tendency to linearly extend every trend into the infinite future. As a "Daily Show" the other night humored: If an infant keeps its rate of growth for several decades, soon it will be the size of giant office buildings and killing us all! Of course we know that isn't the case, just as we know that the economy shifts and sways, and companies try endless tactics to seem to be doing something. In 3 years this will all seem idiotic, but that won't stop the idiots from doing the same thing during the next cyclic downswing.
Yup, it's a sad sad day when college graduates in America are losing jobs to those overseas (particularly India). I was doing Tech Support for Dell for awhile (I know, I know....it paid) and during that time they started outsourcing most of their tech support and customer service to call centers in India. I can't even count how many customers I talked to that were hung up on, or couldn't understand the person, etc etc etc. It might have saved them a few bucks, but it goes to show these companies don't really care about their customers.
Other than the U.S. most other first world countries have had terrible economnic conditions in the recent past (Japan, most of Europe). Often times this is attributed to their more socialist government. I wonder if their closer proximity to cheap labor has been a larger factor, and if this is true, if this predicts the future of the U.S. economy as physical distances become less important.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
Not that veering to the "right" too much doesn't cause catastrophe with monopolies and such, but we really have made doing business in this country incredibly difficult (especially small businesses). Haven't we asked for this?
There was a senator or rep who was a staunch Democrat who, when he retired, tried to start a small business (a hotel I think). His business floundered because of many of the extremely harsh policies that he himself had pushed. Also, former NYC mayor Ed Koch (of People's Court fame) began his term quite social minded, but he lamented that his ideas for transportation of homeless actually costed more than just paying for cab rides for every homeless person (there's more to it than this, my memory is just a bit shaky).
Basically, I feel the pendulum has swung too far to the right perhaps, and overseas business has gotten too attractive, since we've essentially pushed these businesses into a corner with our well-intentioned programs.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
The CNN article makes an intersting point good point
In the 1990s, it seemed all one had to do to buy a ticket to Easy Street was learn a programming language or how to manage corporate computer networks.
Okay, so I've learned a dozen ways to shoot my foot clean off -- and now this article asserts that my skills are just as easily found abroad as here locally.
But is that really what is happening. When I read the above quote, I wonder, how many QUALITY programmers are losing their jobs to concerns overseas?
Similarly, if this is the case, okay, so now what? The computers didn't disappear, nor is the need for software going to go away.
Do we work for less? Do we (dare I say it) unionize? Pass laws? Comments, please.
--- have you healed your church website?
So, we need a new industry that will grow and grow, supposedly like IT does (did). I remember in college just 5 years ago... in my entire class of 100, about 10 of us actually knew what we were doing. The other 90 were laid off assembly line workers trying to make an easy buck and thought they'd give this computer thing a try. The market is getting saturated with idiots with their MCSEs, it's only natural that IT is a tougher field. I was laughed at when I took a government IT job, a lot lower pay than private companys (dot coms especially). Now I laugh at them, for I have a job in IT, making more than they do at Burger King.
Maybe the new industry is fast food.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
IMO, it's somewhat hypocritical to defend the U.S. as the great bastion of free-market capitalism, and then get extremely protectionistic when the jobs move somewhere cheaper.
That's the problem with a global economy --- it's global. If the standard of living in the U.S. can't be sustained because people elsewhere are willing to work for cheaper, then the standard of living will have to adjust. Of course, you know as well as I do that there's no way any politician will ever let the standard of living ever decrease, so we have protectionistic measures like repeatedly trying to save the steel industry, when market logic dictates that it should be mostly moving to Korea.
To end this comment on a bright note (hey, it's Friday, let's be optimistic about the future.), this could all be obviated by the march of technology. I'm betting on life being good once nanotechnology comes of age. Yeah, it's a while off, but then, today seemed a while off to the people of 1903.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
can you buy RAM with food stamps?
This is hardly a revelation. When the supply of some good (labor) exceeds demand (jobs), the price of the good (labor) falls. Big shock. Having been a programmer in the 1980s, I well remember when you were lucky to get $25,000 for a programming job. When the number of jobs increases (when we stop insisting the world admire our mighty power and get back to real work), labor prices will rise again.
Christ, if you think this is bad, thank God that we weren't alive during the Great Depression. That didn't sink us, and this won't either. Also, for those who argue that this time it's different because of globalization: the world was more globalized in 1910 than it is now, because of European colonialism.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
... the Japanese already took all of our jobs in the 80s!
Oh, wait...
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
I asked a reasonably senior guy at Intel if they were hiring. His reply: "Sure we are hiring ... in China and India."
Is today just a dip that will go away? I think so.
Hey, aren't we being selfish?
Think of the people in India that just had their standard of living raised. Who is to say that their living standard is less important than your living standard?
We complain and complain about the Recording Industry backing up a "inferior business model".
So are we! Its time we found something else that we can do better/different.
It makes me laugh how the Americans - the inhabitants of a state founded on the revolutionary concept of liberty - are so phased by the idea of free trade and are always quick to see a conspiracy when lower skilled jobs (yes, folks, that's what they are) go abroad.
Having spent days hacking around with some perl code that my (non-IT literate) colleagues think is just magic, I know that this sort of thing is really not very high skill at all and so of course graduates in Bangalore could do it for less money.
In the mean time we ought to use our greater capital stock and education systems to learn even higher skills and stay ahead in the game.
All of this reminds me of Schumpeter's famous phrase "creative destruction". What has happened is that there was an enormous swell in the demand curve for IT workers in the late nineties with the tech boom. This drove wages up, as the supply curve lagged. As new people entered the field, the supply curve slid out to accomodate demand.
Here's where it always sucks for those workers. The demand curve contracted sharply after the tech bubble burst, so the wages dropped correspondingly. This of course is what every sector (except for the government sector, unfortunately) faces from time to time. A micro-example is the set of jobs created for building a house. Suddenly the house is finished and demand falls to zero.
So what's the long term prognosis? Unless some new wave emerges that causes another correspondingly large shift in demand for tech workers, wages will be where they are, and probably fall further with international competition.
The bright side of all of this, and it's hard for us tech workers to see, is that everyone else gets cheap software and information services. This is the way the system works. The alternative is to chase demand curve shifts and change careers every ten years or so, which is probably not such a bad idea from a spiritual point of view anyhow.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I had a real problem with a Dell box I got a few months ago - the sound card just didn't work under Win2k (it only supported WinXP drivers... whole 'nother story).
Trying to make anyone on their phone or email support understand was equivalent to banging my head against the wall, at least when they had a foreign accent. It went like this:
ME: " I have this problem"
DELL: "Here's a suggestion that is irrelevant to your problem" - something along the lines of, put in your System Recover disk.
ME: "No, you don't understand...blah blah blah"
DELL: "Here's the same suggestion, verbatim, that is still irrelevant to your problem"
ME: "You're not listening!"
DELL: *Repeats same scripted response again*
Finally, after doing this about 6 times, they finally broke down and handed me to an American supervisor. Once they did:
ME: "I have a problem..."
DELL: " OK, we have this solution, OK?"
And with that, a new Linux/Win2k compatible sound card was sent out. What should have taken 10 minutes instead ate up a full day. I guess a full day of 800 phone charges is cheaper than 10 minutes of American salary.
The lesson I learned: it may be cheaper to buy a Dell than building it yourself, but it is just not worth the aggro. Which means that I'd buy or recommend Dell if the support were actually an added value, and probably pay more than they're charging now.
Yeah, I'd say that this free trade thing ain't working out.
I read through the Salon article and noticed that all of the people complaining about jobs had ridden the technology crest (typically of dot.coms) and are now stuck in a trough. I'm not sure if this is wholly a sign of a weak economy as much as a sign of how the value of certain job skills become wildly inflated then normalize.
There have been nearly twenty years of back to back innovations in computer technology that have created whole industires, including
-Personal Computers
-Client Server Computing
-GUI
-The World Wide Web
As each of these technologies took off, people stood to make large sums of money supporting/developing them. Businesses started, merged and were acquired by larger businesses. As the technology matures and supply for expertise catches up with demand, the sums become relatively smaller. The last twenty years of Information Technology have seen one innovation after another. As much as there are a few new technologies on the horizon, I'm not sure the next twenty years will be as active as the last twenty years.
Sorry, but there is no free trade going on here.
We're dealing with countries that have no regulations about the health and well being of employees.
We're dealing with countries that have no regulations about the environment.
We're dealing with countries where the economies are still centrally planned enough such that the cost of labor doesn't rise with demand.
When there is truly a level playing field, sign me up. But stop tooting about how the siphoning off of jobs is somehow related to the holy grail of Free Trade.
I agree. I just want to add that the trend's been here for a while, it's just now hitting a larger mass of people and multiple industries. Manufacturing (textiles) has been moving overseas for over a decade. NAFTA helped speed this up with Mexico. Now that mass amounts of our industrial work is done overseas it's moving into more diverse fields, like telephone support and software development. The more expensive we make it to do business here, and the more we lock employers into taking care of employees for their lifetime (unions), the more companies will look overseas.
Developers: We can use your help.
We have a team in India doing basic database monitoring and support (mostly to back me up, as I'm a finite resource).
They are cheap - about $1000 US a month for their services.
From their resumes and other clients, you would think that they are well trained and efficient.
Unfort, I don't find their work that valuable.
First, while their English is good, it's not good enough. The communication barrier has caused several problems, resulting in database downtime that need not have occurred.
Second, while they advertise themselves as DBAs, there is only one that I marginally trust. We have had to create detailed instructions for doing simple things. They take days to do what I can do in hours, and often fail at what I consider simple, bread-and-butter DBA tasks.
Third, we don't have much of a stick over their head. Should they walk off with our data, our schema, our code, or just trash our site, there is little if anything we could actually do.
An article (recently posted on Slashdot) mentioned that the larger the company, the more likely they were to move IT jobs overseas. In the long run, this is a counter-productive move. Firing a bunch of people will lower the demand for your goods and services; the unemployed don't have the money to spend. And you create a group of seriously pissed off people with time on their hands.
The Salon story mentioned a website called a site where people post these ridiculous jobs. Perhaps someone will come with a site that will list companies that have fired local workers to ship the jobs overseas.
The whole thing makes me wonder if it's time to start thinking about a new career. It's kind of scarey to wonder if tech jobs will become as scarce as those well paying manufacturing jobs of the 50's and 60's (you know, the ones that are now in China, Taiwan, and Mexico).
Cost reductions mean you can buy more for less.
Cost reductions mean unemployed people can hope for more and pay for less
Who wants the cost reductions? Oh... that would be the previously unemployed person...
Got Stock?
The US military has called up some 150,000 reservists in the last several months. Presumably most of these people had civilian jobs before being called up, and most of their employers would need to fill their shoes with temporary workers. I'm just guessing, but I'd think that every ten reservists pulled out of the economy would open up at least five temporary jobs.
These overall job losses are happening despite a probable 75,000 job openings. Eeek.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
The trouble was, most of the advertised positions required prospective employees to have a skill set that rivaled Superman's
.NET, and they did not do very well. Thus, perhaps we need to now request 12 years of Java and .NET. Yeah, that ought to do it."
The trick is bullshitting. Nobody really has all those skills they request. However, bullshitting just keeps inflating the requirements. For example, HR might think, "Well the last person [claimed to] have 8 years of Java and
There is almost no way that companies can verify that sombody has all 15 skills listed (I just got rejected from one the other day because I only had 13 out of 15). The only person who could probably check is the person who *left* the positition they are trying to fill, especially in a smaller company.
Bad decade to be in I.T. Time for a liberal arts degree instead?
Table-ized A.I.
Let's see...
In the early 70's, you could:
Buy an average car for 1/4 to 1/3 of a yearly average household income.
Buy a house for 2x-5x of a yearly average household income.
Today, its more like:
Buy an average car for 1/2 or more of a yearly average household income.
Houses start at 5x yearly average household income.
But here's the kicker: in the early 70's, there was almost always ONE breadwinner making up the average household income. Now, its almost always TWO.
When I was a kid living in Brooklyn, taxi drivers routinely owned homes and cars, and mom didn't work. Today, Mom and Dad work in some service drone job, and can't make ends meet. And that was true 10 and 20 years ago.
Things have gotten a lot worse.
There are several problems here. One of which is the cheapness of labor overseas. Being one of the privileged few who have witnessed the glory that is Indian programming I think I can safely say that we are in no danger of having talented programmers jobless due to this fact.
You get what you pay for. Most of these programming jobs going overseas for half the price are being completed with what can be only described as half an ass. Every example (with few exceptions) of these "discount" programming firms code I have seen is horrendous. I would wager that 90% of these cheap programming firms output pure crap.
Seriously. I have heard of programs coming back from India (and other places) that have pages upon pages of mere variable syncing (Output = Out_put, Output = Out-Put, Output = OutputA, ect...) and other programming horrors.
Another problem is merely the overflow of programmers. Programming in itself is a grunt job. Peon work if you will. The reason it was so highly regarded before is because people who could program were rare. Now they are a dime a dozen. A great analogy is the car mechanic in how there was an overflow of labor force. However, good programmers just like good mechanics will always find work. Everyone needs computers and everyone needs cars.
Just my opinions.
-Purpling
Perhaps they are sending jobs overseas because they won't have to deal with unions. Remember not too long ago, the dock workers went on strike (at the cost of US economy) despite the fact that they were already highest paid blue collar works and management promised job security. How about the mechanics of United Airlines? UA was facing bankruptcy and they still refused a paycut. RTD (Mass transit system for Denver metro area) bus drivers are threatening to go on a strike lately. RTD already were being subsidized by the cities even when the economy was good because they weren't making any money. Now dispite the fact that the cities are hurting for money and jobs are scarce, they want a raise?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
gosh, in hindsight, I cant believe I could have ever doubted the government's plan to increase the number of H1B's to such a ridiculously high number.
now I see that they truly did have our best interests in mind. Employers say "the industry no longer pays salaries like that" when they mean "there are hungry immigrants that are willing to do your job for half your salary"
a big "cheers" to the US government.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Let's face it. Times are tough. Budgets and earnings aren't what it used to be. We need to find ways to save money and tigthen our belts.
In short, we've got to outsource upper management to off-shore countries.
There are plenty of well trained and highly educated people in foreign countries that can do excellent upper-management work: CEOs, CFOs, vice presidents... and they'll do them for pennies on the dollar of the exhorbatent prices we pay for CEOs now. 40 million dollar golden parachute? No more!
>Making cars is not a high skilled job
It certainly is skilled labor, with all kinds of specialization involved.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
When your skill sets consist of things that most 14 year olds do for fun, then yeah, you are going to have a tough time finding a job. Industry has less of a need and more numbers of web developers, so it is not surprising. What do you do? If you can, go back to school, get certified in Cisco (or anything that companies find useful these days)...make yourself more marketable by having skills that aren't already mastered by uneducated teens. We all got spoiled when the tech industry exploded. People doing very little, easy work got rich. Now we have to earn that pay check. So work hard and good luck out there.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Let me say first that I'm posting this as an AC, not because I'm hiding from what I'm about to say, but because there are people in my company who know my Slashdot nick and will probably read this.
I work for a split nationality company based in the US and the UK. Recently we have been hiring Indians as contractors to add to our permanent staff. We also laid off a lot of US coders at the same time. The reason? The Indians are better. Pure and simple. They come from a background of getting things done. The US coders preferred to have have meetings about meetings and in the end produced over-engineered bloatware. The Indians would have produced the software for beta testing before the US staff had finished their multiple rounds of meetings.
It is important to note that I'm not attacking the individual prowess of the coders themselves, more the working culture they are used to. It's a management driven culture with too much beaurocracy and red tape and not enough flexibility. Most of the junior coders ambition was to get into management and earn themselves more money, not to enjoy the challenge of coding in the first place. Indian coders are a breath of fresh air in comparison. They enjoy the challenge and are driven by knowledge, not money and power.
Now, I only approve of any military action if it is purely for defensive purposes only, and even then with great hesitation and if all other means of peaceful solution have genuinely been exhausted. I used to find this saying as merely a silly joke of dubious taste, but considering the way the US government continues increasing its military spending one shouldn't be surprised to see the constructive development side of peaceful things to decline.
Unless, of course, the people of the United States decide to vote for a different set of values that emphasize building rather than destruction.
The US military may wage wars overseas relatively "successfully" but at the same time by going against the world opinion they're shooting their own nation in the foot in terms of public image. Peace and prosperity tend to go hand in hand. Unless you're in the military payroll, of course.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I'm a coder too, and this isnt going to hurt a bit. I agree with you on one thing though; anyone who can do what I do better, faster or for less money, deserves the right to take my income away from me. As far as I am concerned, my only responsibility is to make sure that doesnt happen by continually improving my skills.
I am so sick and tired of the bitching that goes on about jobs leaving the states. If there are better/cheaper resources elsewhere for businesses to depend on, then THEY SHOULD LEAVE.
Maybe when enough businesses have moved their engineering overseas, then people in this country might be better motivated to fix the fucked-up public school system in this country. Never have a nations children been dumber.
Everyone of us knows a child who can tick off rap lyrics in their heads without a thought, who cant remember a lick of basic algebra or chemistry.
And the answer is NOT more money. It's less idiots sucking off the public teat posing as "administrators". Dont get me started, dammit. Kids today are little fools in training for pushing buttons on a McDonalds register. No more, no less.
Requirement: MCSE, CCIE, MA in MIS/CS, VB programming (at least 3 years).
Payscale: $20,000/year.
Bet that job never got filled. That payscale had to be a typo...Add ran for at least 2 weeks.
- The quality of the work being done by Indian (or whatever) programmers (or whatever) varies wildly. Some of it is good, a lot if it is not.
- In my experience, companies like Amex who outsourced their entire IT needs to IBM India (yes, IBM India) and let loose hundreds of employees are now rehiring those same employees (mostly analysts and PMs) through third-tier consulting firms at a much lower cost. So they get the quality they need (because they can't get it from Indians) but they save a bundle of money. It's not uncommon to find a project manager at Amex directing 15 indians that used to be manager or director of so-and-so two years ago. This is (I think) more about deflating the job market than shipping jobs to other countries.
- The perennial "web programmer" and "web designer" and so on is out of work because there is no more market for them. There are no more dotcoms hiring teams of 20 people to "design" three web pages at ~$60K+ per year. No way. But software developers and architects and so on with solid experience and real skills are still finding jobs. The subject of the Salon article sounds to me more like one of those foofy "html programmers" or equivalent than anything else.
The dotcom boom created thousands of jobs that were filled by people with 6 months of experience and a "computer degree" from a community college or Devry. Sorry, but those are gone. No more demand. These people should go back to what they were doing before the went into "computers" to make "big bucks".It sounds callous, but it's true.
Oh yeah, well India and China will never be able to make *and* deliver a pizza in under 30 minutes, so my job is safe.
I think Dell support is just awful all-around. My last run-in with their tech support required talking to 12 different people and almost 20 phone calls. More than half sounded like American english speakers, and some of the helpful ones did not. I don't think the outsourcing is hurting them-- I think a lack of commitment to quality, training, and infrastructure is hurting them.
These things jumped out at me:
1. Their order tracking system is so unreliable that they are willing to assume (with no data in their system) that you placed an order for something, and it's just magically lost data.
2. Their pricing system does not allow them to see the sale prices offered on the web site.
3. They were unable to re-place a botched order at the price it was ordered at, and had to resort to issuing a credit to my card attached to an old order to make up the price difference!
4. There is no consistency in the abilities the reps have. Some could change prices. Some could place orders. Some could change past orders. Most couldn't do any, and nobody could do it all.
In short, I don't think it's any sort of "American tech support is better than Indian" argument. It's just that Dell sucks.
The reason "this free trade thing ain't working out" is that we don't have free trade. If things were truly open, do you really think labor in other countries would be so much cheaper? Things will even out in time. Our grandkids may even have a realistic world economy, where the value of labor doesn't fluctuate by factors of 100 based on where you live. But I'm not holding my breath-- this stuff moves slowly. Really slowly. This kind of outsourcing is better for the world in the long run, even if it sucks for our job market short-term.
Because they don't have an education? Not everyone goes to college. You know, we're not idiots, and we do get it. You're bringing up an entirely different point, however. That we should let other countries produce unskilled labor for us, while we take the technical jobs. This isn't something that the "geniuses on the left" believe either. We don't have the most well-educated society in the world, and if you had ever lived in America (I sincerely hoped you either haven't or you are physically blind), you'd see that most Americans, like most humans, aren't cut out for the high-profile research or designing jobs you're talking about. Only a few will actually make it to become good engineers; being an engineer is hard.
If/when the US stops producing anything, we will essentially be a third world nation.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
So this is where we get told that Americans are greedy and we ask for too much. Never mind the fact that we can't control the cost of the living . We want 50k/year because that is the minimum that allows us to live in our area but since 50k seems like a god's wages we are automatically deemed a-holes.
Then we will be bashed because foreign workers need jobs too! Never mind the fact that the one's at home are being destroyed and that contributes to a weak economy, which gets even weaker as bottom line companies see oppotunity on foreign soil, which then in turn damages the global economy because those same companies now have to close shop due to the fact that absolutely no one is actually spending money in the US.
I've heard this shit so many times before it really rings old. The fact is this is not a company bottom line issue and it's not a "greedy american" issue. It's a economic issue which the US administration needs to address before it gets out of hand.
I guess we all should go to hollywood and sell shiny bubbles. Apparently it's the only thing that sells.
I am an out of work web designer. I have a talent that is shared by thousands upon thousands of twelve year olds sitting in their parents basement. The only jobs I can find with "web design" in them are things I dont want to do. I guess I will start a website whining about it.
Oh give me a BREAK! Life sucks. You were probably getting paid an exhorbitant rate to do a job that just about anyone with half a brain and a handful of good manuals could do, and now, instead of moving out of a dead field, you are bitching and whining that the few jobs available arent what you want. Waah.
Get over it. Go get a _real_ job. Dig ditches. Put roofs on houses. The housing industry is in a huge boom.. I'm sure someone near you could use a dogsbody to carry things around or pick up construction scrap, and pay you a decent wage for a days work.
*feh*
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
The "mess with Iraq" may have been going on for some time now, but it hasn't been in the public's eye. Now it's plastered all over the media and the public is scared.
Think of the general population as a flock of sheep. If someone jumps up and scares only a few sheep, they'll start running and before you know it the entire flock is on the move.
Lately, all the public has heard from the media is the constant droning of how the economy continues to fall. Just like the sheep, they prepare for the worst, tighten up their belts and start running. It truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy and we're really seeing it pay off in the worst possible way!
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
Is that whenever a democrat is in office, there are plenty of jobs for American workers (white collar, blue collar, doesn't matter). Democratic presidents seem to create an environment that creates and fosters a middle class. Whenever a Republican is in office there are massive layoffs and jobs moving overseas. As soon as we get rid of Bush, we can start rebuilding the damage he's doing.
Republicans are only good for rich people, not working people of any colored collar.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
People have been living beyond their means since 1990 or so. Does everyone deserve a giant McMansion and a new SUV? I think not.
The woman in that story has a mortgage to worry about... awwwww, too bad. She went into debt to buy that house even though if she had one iota of intellect she would've recognized the flawed business plans of IT startups. So she borrowed a ton of money when her position wasn't secure and she got layed off. That's her fault.
Geeks have been thinking the rules don't apply to them for too long... it's time to be humbled, folks.
I wrote an article about this phenomenon a while back (when I was facing the same unrealistic job requirements).
My favorite anecdote was a job ad requiring 5 years experience writing technical manuals for military vehicles. People who write such job ads end up paying more than they should because of this "illusion of scarcity."
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Not true.
I know a lot of business owners who operate in niche markets and run a small business. It may not be as easy as it was several decades ago (was it ever easy?), but it's possible. Look in your local phone book. Check out the business section. There may be a lot of franchises and whatnot, but there will almost always be one or two local small businesses in each market. They survive, they always will because they fill an economic need that a global corporation cannot fill
Who said Freedom was Fair?
This really sounds like the business equivalent of a pyramid scam.
The motivation behind cutting costs in things like IT is so that the business as a whole (and particularly the execs) can have more money.
However, in order to *make* that money, customers need to be able to afford the product. If no one is making a decent salary (by which I mean at least $40k for a household), no one is going to be able to afford the products at their current prices. The only alternative will be to cut the selling price, which eliminates the original reason for the outsourcing. Either that or continue the pyramid and find an even cheaper country to do the work, and temporarily make money off of today's India and China.
I am also curious as to the long-term results of basically removing increasingly skilled jobs from western countries. It's not like we can *all* be fast food cooks.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Lowering Everybody to the Lowest Common Denominator Since NAFTA (C)
--sdem
There is a relatively simple way to change this trend in the United States.
First of all, buy American. If you're too cheap to buy a more expensive American made product over a cheaper foreign made product then stop complaining.
American made products are expensive for one reason...American labor is expensive, no matter what the skill level. Most American's believe it is "unfair" and beneath them to work in a sweat shop for a buck an hour.
The entire concept we American's have that sitting at a machine and manufacturing sneakers, clothes, cars, circuit boards or whatever is either beneath us or not worth our time is exactly what causes products made by American companies expensive. The fact that an unskilled laborer can make as much if not more money than a Masters Degreed programmer tells the tale. They're paying that unskilled person my wage because 1. he demands it, and 2. they can afford to.
Enter the foreign made competitive product selling for half the cost of the American made product. As the foreign made product gains market share the American company feels it can no longer compete, and therefore must find a way to become competitive and thus ships jobs off shore.
Solution! Buy American, and stop bitching that the product is too expensive.
I'm sure I'll get flamed by the libertarian free-market fanatics for posting this, but this is the truth and it needs to be heard.
Ernest Partridge: 'Dear CEO: Is this really what you want?'
By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers [crisispapers.org]
An open letter to the Chief Executive Officers of the Fortune 500 companies, and of the major commercial media.
Dear CEO,
Congratulations! You have won, decisively and overwhelmingly.
Your favored politicians and political party are now in control of all three branches of the United States government. Your political and economic ideologies, preached virtually without rebuttal in your media, have been enacted by law, executive order and judicial decree. And those ideologies are destined to be solidified as federal judges who endorse these ideologies come to dominate the federal judiciary.
As a result of your victory, the Congress of the United States now follows the dictates of its corporate "sponsors," and is thus no longer responsive to the wishes and interests of its constituents. The Federal regulatory agencies the EPA, the FCC, the SEC, the FDA, etc. have become the captives, and virtual subsidiaries, of the industries that they were intended to regulate.
Thanks to "your" Administration and Congress, and the unchallenged political message of "your" media, the fortunate wealthy few, like yourself, are the beneficiaries of "tax reform" legislation which accelerates the flow of national wealth from the vast majority of our population which produces that wealth, to those of you who own and control that wealth. That same tax policy is producing enormous deficits in the federal budget and an increase in the national debt that will likely bankrupt the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and burden our children and grandchildren essentially forever. But, of course, none of that directly affects you and yours.
All in all, you have received from the incumbent Administration and Congress, an overwhelmingly favorable return on your investment in campaign funds.
However, I must wonder if you have carefully assessed the larger return on this investment, the full consequences of your complete political victory.
If you do, I suspect that you may discover that yours has been a pyrrhic victory. You might, on reflection, decide that you do not really want the prize that you have won. You may in fact have reaped a whirlwind so dreadful that you may wish, while there is still time, to make corrections or even, dare I say, reparations.
One might urge you to reassess your "victory" and your continuing course of political action on grounds of morality, of religion, or of political tradition. Instead, I would ask you to assess the current political condition in the United States from the perspective of that central principle of the dominant economic theory: the principle of self-interest.
From the perspective of self-interest alone, I would submit that all that you have won may be much less than meets the eye, and that this accomplishment might even contains the seeds of its own destruction, and of your ruin.
The Economy: At the Democratic convention of 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the finest Republican mind in the Democratic Party, quoted Harry Truman: "to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat." This is more than a partisan slogan, it is history. Mark Hulbert reports, in CBS Market Watch [smirkingchimp.com] that "since 1901, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages average annual gain, after inflation, has been nearly twice as high when a Democrat has occupied the White House."
But if the history of the last century is unconvincing, just think back to the past decade. While its true that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have given you
I really don't understand how the economy works, so please bear with me and correct me where I'm wrong.
It seems to me that the amount of money in the world is constant, and to some lesser degree so is the amount of money in America. Alteast, that's the way my simple mind would like to see it. In this model, money's value doesn't grow or shrink... it just changes hands.
So *if that's the case*, who is getting rich while everyone else's stocks are plumetting? Or is the definition of an economic growth/decline that the *value* of a dollar changes? I'm sure many of you have a far better grasp on this stuff than me, so lets hear your answers if you've got em.
no comment
A very well done book about the changing nature of work, both in the US and out. It covers hi-tech and low-tech jobs, from Microsoft to Starbucks. Very good reading. She has a website nologo.org, but as far as I am concerned the book is much better than the materials there.
But if we farm out more and more jobs, then are we not going to have the money to buy good and services?
Or, will the goods and services be so cheap, (presumably since they are made and supported elsewhere) that we can afford to work Burger King?
What, me Tweet?
I think we all need to think a bit more about what "moving jobs overseas" actually means. Paul Krugman has an excellent analogy in one of his books:
Imagine an enterprising individual discovers a new method of manufacturing a widget. He produces them at half the cost (i.e. half the workforce) of all his competitors. He's hailed as a savior of the American widget industry. America is competitive again! Good jobs for those in the widget industry.
It is then discovered that said enterprising individual was actually shipping equipment to India, manufacturing them there, then shipping them back. Suddenly America is no longer competitive in widget making!
What changed? Not anything from the American perspective. Efficiency almost inescapably means less people are able to do more.
The question which we should all ask ourselves is: Why is efficiency good only when it involves exclusively Americans?
What you have described sounds like bad training - it has no bearing on the capability of the call centers in other countries. Obviously, in this case , DELL did not train these guys well.
Ever hear all those people complain about Americans buying foreign cars and how it's hurting the US economy? Well now it's come to the white collar workers. Companies are hiring out people overseas because they are cheaper than an American with the equivalent skills. I think anyone that drives a foreign car can't complain about loosing their IT job to a foreign market.
But I must add I think this is a good thing. A global economy is much more efficient than a secluded economy. Cheaper employees means cheaper goods. Countries with different laws, skills, geography and culture can specialize in different areas and work in those areas more efficiently. Specialization is better than being a jack-of-all-trades.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Damn eastern european women are taking all the porn jobs!!
They are 19, perfect bodies and will take it from both ends for only $50. Whats a porn star to do in the globalized economy!?
In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery. I won't provide statistics, but check out (a) Literacy rates (b) Infant mortality (c) Homicide rates (d) % of population below the poverty line, and (e) the gap between the rich and poor. A large middle class running in hamster wheels does not a First World country make. Also: Labor unions are a reaction against the insane exploitation of the 19th century. If the need wasn't there, they would not have been formed, 'cause Americans hate that shit. And in pure opinion, I believe it has less to do with Democratic myopism and more to do with some extremely rich people pulling the ladder up after themselves. Figuratively speaking.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
First a general rule, troll: When your neighbor loses a job, it's a recession. When you lose a job, it's a depresion. I don't have to lineraly extend my future more than a few months or so to know that I will soon lose my the rest of my savings, my house and hopes of a good education for my 15 month old daughter.
It's been idiotic for 30 years or so, or have you not been watching US manufacturing capacity go down the tubes? Those who do, know and those who know get hired. With all of that contraction, US industry has not done much hiring in the last 20 years. They are out of people, out of knowledge and out of luck as those who know retire. There ARE people elsewhere who HAVE been making things and they do know what they are doing. This trend will only accelerate as more and more big dumb companies decide to "outsource" their manufacturing and knowledge base. Bill Clinton's "Service Economy" was the dumbest thing ever. It depends on control of intelectual property that will increasingly be foreign. Even military dominance will fade with knowledge.
A good start to solving the problem would be to STOP TRADING WITH SLAVE ECONOMIES SUCH AS CHINA. We would have to convince our friends in Europe and elswhere that it's in their best interest to not train and fund their future masters. Otherwise, we all lose.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Foreign nationals continue to really jump ship in the US hoping to get a US job.
I can't believe that everyone didn't see this situation coming. It is the logical path of a world controlled by corporations in an emerging global economic system.
For the corporations the equation is always simple and, for the most part, always the same. The path that reaps the greatest profit is the path to follow. Period, end of story, no appeals allowed.
Out sourcing work to cheap labor increases profits so it will continue. There are three ways that jobs may start coming back to the US.
1. We lower our wages to compete. (Not a good option)
2. The legal system does something that impedes jobs from being outsourced. (Not a good option)
3. It becomes more expensive to outsource than to keep jobs in the US. (The best option)
Option number 3 will slowly occur as the living standard rises in the countries where the work is currently being outsourced. As the workers wages rise and come in line with the wages in the US costs of producing goods in those countries will rise.
This could take a long time, however, and one of the big questions is: When the cost of production comes to parity where will the factories that produce the goods be located? We may be loosing jobs for a lot longer if there is no incentive to move the jobs back to the US. The startup expense is one thing that is keeping some factories in the United States but once moved it will be the same startup expense that will keep them out.
It will be interesting to see how politicians deal with the effects of selling out the American people to the corporations.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Do we work for less? Do we (dare I say it) unionize? Pass laws? Comments, please.
We compete.
That's really all there is to it. Whether it's a business or an individual facing foreign compentition, the solution is the same: work harder and smarter. That may mean cutting costs (or your salary). It may mean longer hours or finding a niche.
The worst thing you can do is try to legislate your existance in the market. Unionizing has lots of pros and cons which vary for each market, but I don't think it's a solution here. The idea is just to compete. If you don't want to, fine, but don't expect to stay in the market.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
The reason some have to work for peanuts is that they're stupid or unskilled labor that is priced out of the market by foreign competition. Unfortunately, we've got a huge world oversupply of unskilled labor and that needs to be sopped up as soon as possible. Until it does, companies will continue to move their operations.
As for healthcare, most of the 'great' social healthcare systems in Europe are tearing at the seams because they either can't keep up with progress or are just too expensive to sustain. The US issue is that we don't have a loser pays legal system so doctors order many, many tests that are not required in order to avoid a career ending trip in front of a jury that might view them as a deep pocket and impoverish them, destroying their practice.
This is affecting a lot more than just "web designers" who had no skills beyond that covered in "MS Frontpage for Dummies."
My extended circle of friends and I all have solid educations and lots of experience covering pretty much every aspect of IT that you can name, but no potential employer will give us the time of day. It's not a matter of demanding unreasonable salaries either - if we call their bluff and say that we're willing to accept a low salary just to pay the mortgage, we're told that we're out of consideration since the boss is sure that within a month the economic fairies will come around and we'll bolt for a well-paying job at a new startup.
Finally, my connections on "the other side of the fence" have told me that the ridiculous requirements on these lists are there for a reason - the powers that be want to give the appearance of looking for an employee, but they have no intention of actually hiring anyone. The way they hid this is by creating lists that no single person could possibly satisfy, then offering a wage far below what such a mythical person would actually accept.
If somebody actually had all of that experience and was desperate enough to accept the salary, some overlooked requirement would be discovered. E.g., for a while a popular overlooked requirement was that you had to speak fluent Japanese - and have spent several years in that country.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The U.S. health system is way ahead of the rest of the world because it is controlled by the people, not the rulers.
Ha! Ha! This is a joke, right?
Maybe you like the idea of living in a world where a few owners of capital pay the rest of us just barely enough to justify going to work, but I don't.
Dockworkers have/had an effective union, so they had high wages, and they stopped efforts by management to route around them. They wouldn't have those high wages without the union. Firms are going to find ways to lower costs; unions are the best method of making sure the workers have a decent wage.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
Exactly which part of the employment regs in most countries am I wrong about?
I justify my own employment in the states just fine thanks.... oh and thanks for making the assumptions. After all... it's not as if your own accomplishments can make you feel good.... much better to drag down someone else who has a justifiable complaint.
By the way... 'Hawaii' doesn't count as overseas.
Nor does Guam. Or any other commonwealth/protectorate nation.
I've had my share of ups and downs in this industry. I started my career in the Savings & Loan industry -- and after that industry went bust in the early 80s, I had to find a new place to make a buck. A similar collapse hit the "web industry" over the last five years (lots of unjustified hype, bad management, etc.) -- and while I wasn't writing web pages or Flash animations, I was affected nonetheless. I worked as a development director/lead technologist at a couple small businesses that killed themselves by leaving reliable industries to "webify" their product. Both companies are gone, but I'm still here.
There's nothing unique to the computer industry when it comes to bust-boom cycles. It happens all the time in other industries. My wife began her working life 25 years ago as a geological drafter -- you know, with pens, ink, fancy templates. The collapse of the oil and minerals industry did more to end her career than any new reliance on computer-aided drafting. Is she crying in her soup? Heck no -- she worked for various social agencies, often for low wages or free, and built herself a new career in disaster recovery and education. Businesses may come and go, but there'll always be disasters. ;)
Right now, I'm doing contract work, writing a book, and placing myself for a "coming thing" that may or not be big in our industry. My wife has a nice, stable job; our kids learned long ago that their Mom and I don't listen to "gimme, gimme." It's sometimes difficult, but we keep surviving. Never surrender, never give up -- a good philosophy from a very funny movie.
All about me
(Hit the damn "Submit" button instead of "Preview.")
.. that's what the US is supposed to be all about. I don't even so much mind the process of farming out work to overseas groups. But when your job description is to take service calls from primarily English-speaking people in America, you're going to end up with a lot of frustration if the people you've got doing that job cannot speak English very well.
To continue, the fan kept on giving me problems, and so I called Dell back. This time I got an American operator, who went back over the notes that the Indian operator had taken during the previous call. According to those notes, I was having problems with my processor fan, and he had asked me to do a bunch of things that I had never heard of before! I explained that I had been very explicit: the problem was the PSU fan, I had thoroughly blown it out with compressed air, the fan was noisy and dying, and I needed a replacement.
Within five minutes, he had placed an order to send me a new power supply and I was on my way. Long story short: I don't mind people who come here to work for their own slice of the American dream
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
'Cmon. How can /. be so far behind on this story?
For those of us in the industry, go check out TechsUnite.org for info on what we can do to have our voices heard on this matter.
To me, its just as important to be a member of TechsUnite as it is the EFF.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Dude, you need to move out of brooklyn. Or the valley. Or wherever it is you're living that costs are that high. And stop looking at BMWs.
A nice, new Honda Accord is less than 1/4 the national average household income. A house in a less inflated real-estate market should work well for you also. $120K for 4 bedrooms here in Indiana, and interest rates are rock-bottom.
For the record, the average household income in 2002 for the whole US was $58K. Your numbers for the value of stuff in the 70s are still true today. 1/3 of $58K is a little over $19K. Plenty for a new car. Houses start at only a little more than 1x that here! Lots of small houses in the $85-$90K range. Huge houses (by valley/nyc standards) are available for $150K.
First Ammendment - Why is this even an argument? Republicans tend to want to censor speech more than the dems, so the dems win this one.
Gun Laws - ridiculous. 2nd ammendment is there in the CONSTITUTION. Republicans win this one.
4th Ammendment - Republicans want to search you, your house, your moms house etc in the name of the "war on drugs" and now the "war on terror" Dems aren't much fuckin' better. But dems are a little looser so dems win this one.
Abortion - Well in reality making it illegal doesn't prevent it from happening, it simply makes it punishable. so even if you are against abortion, you have to realize outlawing it is futile. Dems win this one. Women truly have a choice in reality. A choice between a safe & legal abortion or no abortion is better than a choice between a dangerous illegal abortion or no abortion. Even God would agree with this logic.
Corporate welfare vs worker rights/ Labor. Until I own a corporation, I have to consider myself a worker. Dems win this one. How anyone can vote for something that will reduce their wages, reduce their health care, make them work longer hours all so that some asshole in a board room can export thier job to india to make even more money is beyond me. WAKE THE FUCK UP. How 'bout a little self preservation!!!! Unless you own a corporation, you need to see the light!!!
Jails versus Education: hmm, spend money on educating our children so that they will be prepared to lead our country when they inherit it, or cut spending in schools and parks & rec programs only to eventually spend more money on jails to house our misguided uneducated forgotten youth? tough one here. gee, what should we do ?
Democrats win. Republicans are greedy assholes who can afford private shools for their children. What about the rest of the nations. Those punk asses that are not getting education and resort to crime will hopefully rob your house you greedy fuckheads. (unfortunately you rich bastards live ina gated community, so they'll rob my house and the house of other working men and women, which is unfortunate because it's YOUR POLICY that destroyed thier chances of making it in this world).
Corporate friendly env. policy versus environmental friendly environmental policy. Hmm, in my short life time I've seen 200-500% growth in my home town. Land Development is BIG BUSINESS. It's sad to see them rape the land to build a shitload of cheap ass houses all crammed in tight next to eachother. If those greedy fucks would build one or two less houses per project then all the families that moved in would get yards and a little bit of privacy. Instead they are living in a future ghetto that frankly looked better as natural land. That's the friendliest of the land uses. Chemical plants, manufacturing plants, refineries, junk yards. SHEESH!!! This whole country will be one paved piece of shit in less than 50 years. It's fine if you own a big ass ranch in texas, who cares if your refinery pollutes the fuck out of some poor neighborhood in the wrong side of town. Maybe it will kill those "niggas" before you have to arrest them after they drop out of that shitty high school you wouldn't approve the tax dollars to fix up because you wanted some tax cuts to afford to pay off the crooked politician who allowed the refinery. FUCK!!! Democrats win this one too.
You see, aside from the gun thing, republican policy benefits only a small minority of wealthy assholes. The rest of us get screwed every which way in a increasingly painful cycle. We lose our jobs so our kids go to cheap schools which don't get good funding because money is going to corporations so our kids poor and pissed off do drugs or get pregnant or drop out or graduate and go to college despite the odds, then they lose their jobs and their kids go to crap schools, etc. etc. over and over again while more and more of us become poor and a few fortunate a-holes get richer and richer.
well, it can only go on for so long before we unite and kill you you fuckin rich assholes
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
One of my coworkers had an interesting idea though. He was considering signing up with the California Highway Patrol. It seems like a good plan. Officers make over $50k a year for entry level, get tons of benefits (like $3000 a year for meals), extra perks/pay for specialized skills (such as piloting or even bilingual), and there is a real growth opportunity. Police officers are in high demand in California right now. Look in the classified in any paper and you will see several listings for several cities. Even my sleepy little hometown of Half Moon Bay, CA is always looking for new officers.
I actually considered, and am still considering, signing up too. I'll have to get in a little bit better shape before I do, but that's not a problem. It would be a rewarding job where I could make a difference, and make some cash too. Something to think about, anyway. You gotta give it up to the Uncle Sam. Best employer you could ever have.
Allow me to play devil's advocate here:
So what's wrong with making a profit? Since when did the CEO or owner of any company owe you or anyone in the US a job? The CEO's responsibility is to maximize profits not turn the company into a US charity.
And it's not "child labor" that's taking over the IT industry. Those jobs are going to people who would otherwise have a lot lower standard of living. And no one is forcing them to take those jobs.
To turn the question: Why are you being so greedy wanting high paid jobs when there are those who could do the work, perhaps not as well, but well enough, for a lot less money? What makes you more worthy?
Look, I'm not trying to flame you personally. I'm just trying to help people think from another point of view. We immediately label these actions as just the "greed" of the corporations, but what about our own "greed"?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
At least with H1-B visas, the people live and work in the United States, spending their $$$ here. Many become citizens or permanent residents.
But with offshore software development, we all lose. At least, companies that do this (i.e., Adobe Systems) should have to pay a steep import tax on any software developed oversees.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Please explain to me how the war in Iraq has anything at all to do with an economy that only appears to be failing because of a massive shedding of fake Internet jobs in 2001-2002.
The economy IMO is back to where it should be, after the excesses of the late 90s. Nobody needs a department full of pot-smoking Dreamweaver "experts" anymore.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The problem with Option 3 is that its going to take a long time (if ever) for this to happen. Jobs outsourced to India have techs earning 1/5th a day's wage compared to the same job in the U.S.
Personally, I'd like to see Option 2 done -- and soon.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
This is the way things go with the way big corporations work and the way current trade and labour laws are set up.
This has been happening for a long time in other sectors of the economy. Manufacturing and textiles have largely been moved to cheap labour economies where labour laws are lax and workers are paid ridiculously small amounts.
The same thing is now happening in the tech industry. Jobs are moving to countries with a glut of highly educated people that are willing to work long hours under less than optimal work conditions.
So increasingly, people in North America are told that they should not unionize and work harder for less money and benefits. This is the way (we are told) to 'advance' our economies. Because what is good for the rich is good for all of us.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
I drive one (of 2) of those big ass SUV's, and I'll shoot anyone who wants to deny me my right to them. No one takes money from public schools, it isnt their money. You must be one of those socialists who actually believe that our money belongs to the government, and we are lucky to have what they let us keep.
The hell with that. I'll bet you are one of those freakin' socialists who think it is their place to tell me what I need and dont need, as if it is your right.
I dont work for the government, I work for me. My money is MY money, not yours, not the governments, not the welfare momma you might have come from.
Wake up genius; People built this country, not governments. People built those sucky public schools that turn out nothing of note these days. It is PEOPLE who can either fix them, or become irrelavent as people move their kids to places where they can learn, and the dregs can stay there and practice Condoms101 on each other.
I have firsthand experience using offshore labor (hiring programmers for small to medium jobs).
We found one AMAZING guy in Russia. $15/hour. He's not always consistent (he's 23, just got married and still setting his life up) but he understands and does what he's asked in a reasonable amount of time.
Two other programmers from Russia and two others from India were either incompetent, incommunicative, or both.
I'm not worried. It will take a LONG time for them to train to our standards, and when they do they simply RAISE the amount of useful labor produced and therefore raise the quality of life for us AND them.
Predicted long ago by the cantankerous Edward Yourdon. Ed was complaining about sloppy US software engineering as well as cheap, competent international labor. Ed wrote a sequel during the dot.com boom rebutting his earlier thesis, but the earlier ideas seem more accurate. Ed's numerous books start with some current social commentary, then repeat his personal brand of software engineering.
For some of us, recession has been the story of our careers. I've got training out the ying-yang, and have been doing it since my first degree in 1989. BA, BS and most of a MS. Work experience as I could find it, the last being 2 years with a fortune 500 company. Know what? It's worthless.
Christ, if you think this is bad, thank God that we weren't alive during the Great Depression.
That's comming, stupid. Root cause analysis
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You have no complaint, you have a whine. Tell me just where you have tried to work other than the states? Or better yet, save it. You havent tried, you are just repeating the same old coward's line about unfairness.
I got a little violent. Please don't view this as a threat to you. Hell I don't even know who you are. You are in NO DANGER. I repeat, the violent nature of this post is NOT A THREAT. It's a lame-ass technique of making a point. Please don't have me arrested by the "terror police". Thanks.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
A new house of today tends to be much larger and more featured than house of yesteryear. For example, the great housing story of the 50s was Levittown. Its where the great suburban fantasy started. A typical new home in Levittown was something like 700 square feet. Typical new homes of today are two and three times as large. They tend to have washers and dryers standard, and other features that were unheard of in Levittown. Similar statements can be made about cars. I've owned cars from the 60s and 70s. There is no meaningful comparison with the cars of today in terms of features, safety, and quality. Therefore, you cannot directly compare their costs in such a simplistic way.
OK I can't resist. I used to work in the auto industry and our CEO once said what the customer wants is:
German Engineering
Japanese Quality
American Service
Mexican Price
I hate to say it, but he was right and that's what companies are trying to do when they outsource jobs. Consumers are so sensitive to slight differences in price, so if one company in their sector makes a change to save a very small amount of cash while putting American workers out of work, every other company that markets the same goods or services has to do something to cut costs by the same amount. We have to realize that the American consumer is driving this phenomenon. I don't know how to fix it, but we are creating our own problem.
They go by the names McKinsey and Co, Monitor Group, AT Kearney, etc.
Where else have I looked? Australia, the Netherlands, England, various other countries in Europe as well.
Since I don't have three years salary saved up to live off of.... none of those are an option.
Possibly you could explain why you're so defensive on this subject?
The moral enigma of prgrammers:
The ultimate goal of a good programer is to do away with repetitive tedious work. As that happens, processes streamline and less employees are needed for the same operations until eventually they are all replaced.
The programmer is here to replace unskilled workers with robots. Don't you think that's worth a load of money to a CEO who is looking 5-15 years down the road? The problem of today is that they are no longer looking at the road, they are looking at the tail-lights ahead of them and guessing whether the guy will brake or go.
Hammer of Truth
It all started going to hell in Sept/Oct of the last year of Clinton's administration. Why? He was on the way out. Gore looked terrible. Bush even worse. When the economy is better, come back and explain to me how Bush made it better. Right now he's had plenty of time and it's only gotten worse and worse. Sure if you had some money saved up now is a good time to buy a car for 0 down and 0 interest, or to get a 5.0% home loan, but that doesn't mean the economy is good. Oh contraire. Look at all the real indicators. Unemployment, wage cuts, or look at the other side of the economy, stock prices, P&L, S&P. We're all screwed right now. If this is CLEANING IT UP, I'm not very impressed.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
When Wired magazine first started printing, they claimed that video-on-demand/interactive TV brought to us by TCI would take over the world. They had no context for predicting things like P2P. Too often futurists use their present contexts as a basis for prediction. The best ones don't.
Unions are a pretty good answer to the question, "How do we turn this rich country into a poor country?"
See for example the economic history of Great Britain for the 80 years ending in about 1980. It started that period as the richest country in the world. By 1979, it looked ready for bankruptcy. What turned it around was drastic changes in the legal status of trade unions, which greatly reduced their power. Seen as partisan at the time, the new legal framework is now accepted by all political parties. And the country is back on its feet.
I can't answer the question of whether all the tech jobs are headed overseas with complete certainty. I suspect they aren't because there are things that require hands on work. Someone here suggested becoming a plumber because that can't be shipped overseas.
Nonetheless, there's a concept in economics called "comparative advantage". David Friedman explains it at considerable length in his book Price Theory: An Intermediate Text. The relevant chapter can be found here. I'll give a shorter summary.
Assume there are two people. Let's call them Joe and Asok. Joe's labor to make a car costs $1000. His labor to assemble a PC and load all the software is $100. Asok can build the car for $250 and set up the PC for $75. Asok does both jobs cheaper. It doesn't matter whether he's cheaper because his labor is less expensive per hour or because he works faster. He'll end up with the car manufacturing and Joe will be supporting the PCs, because neither of them can do both at the same time. Think of the price of PCs in cars or cars in PCs.
During a recession, when there is more labor than businesses demand, both jobs can get done where the labor is cheapest. When demand for labor rises again, the jobs that get done in various places will depend on comparative advantage.
There are differences in cost, quality, availability, skills and numerous other factors. All of those will help determine which industries and products each country, or even region, enjoys a comparative advantage in.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
As capital can move over borders, what about international labor organizing? Not that this will help information technology. Code, like music and film, wants to be free.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
In a world where goods move much, much more freely than people (skilled labour), is it any wonder that if companies in the US can't bring people here to work - and consume US goods, and contribute to the US economy locally - that the companies will instead move research and production facilities to where (static) labour is cheap, and move the finished product or even better, the information much more fluidly between borders?
Something to think about whenever the IEEE comes out with H1B bashing articles. Open immigration - the kind where you become a citizen, not a indentured servant ala H1B - is a good thing. Canada has much more open immigration policies and for the most part, is much stronger because of it.
..don't panic
The problem is that corporations have drastically cut technology spending because the same dumb-asses who were overspending while managing companies during the bubble are still in management causing another disaster, this time underspending. So their quick and dirty solution is to axe people at home in favor of hiring hordes overseas. This is only going to lead to more problems at home since there's not enough incentive/money for innovative people to start technology ventures.
That being said, it's the people with vision, creativity, and the moxy to take risks during a bad economy that survive and prosper when the good times roll around. We need people who have ideas to strive their hardest to go take a shot at whatever venture capital is out there and start new companies and develop new/improved technologies to make what the offshore workers are doing obsolete.
My contribution in all of this? I'm genetically engineering a new Linux penguin that lays golden eggs...
You want some advice? Build relationships with people in companies in the countries you want to work in. In the mean time build your reputation by getting published or something else that can display your skills in advance of your just showing up. Pick the companies you want to work for and HAMMER them. Dont pick a country, pick a company. If you write a book, and it is so much as marginal, you wont need 3 years income to survive on it. Are you good enough at what you do to write a book? If so, get on it dude, and stop bitching.
Median family income for FY2002 in the US was $54,400. A whopping $4K less than the national average I quoted. I don't think there are quite as many robber barons as you believe.
p df
See here:
http://www.huduser.org/datasets/il/fmr02/tran236.
or here for google's HTML-ified version.
Actually, the underlying problem is that States do not do a good job of investigating and revoking licenses of quacks. Furthermore, they don't have a good way of sharing licensing databases across state lines.
What the insurance lobby doesn't want you to know is that the vast majority of malpractice claims are owed due to only a handful of doctors, some of whom still have a license with 4+ claims won against them! However, if the insurers can keep their overall trial costs down, it will discourage both legitimate and silly claims against them while allowing them to charge MORE for malpractice insurance for licensed quacks. Lastly, the States won't have to spend more money on the licensing boards which sounds good in a recession.
The losers are claimees, who may not be able to recoup enough money to pay for a crippled life (or whathaveyou) and patients in general since the quacks will still be out there, insured as much as ever...
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
OK, how's nanotechnology (even if I bought that it was anything more than science fiction) going to save anything?
Think about it. If someone creates some super technology (call it the GEEK, perhaps - I wonder if anyone will get the reference), that does so much work that we can all live like kings with no effort, how am going to get a job so I can buy it? No one will need me, because the technology can already do everything.
I suppose as a society we can spend our extra resources on art, medicine, and science, since no technology is going to replace our need for these. The reality is we'd probably just end up with more lawyers and other forms of parasites. (Yes, lawyers are useful at times and they're not all parasites, but I think we already have way more than we should need). I'd say that this is what already is already happening in the US and other developed countries? (Unfortunately, rather than have some technology that does all the work cheaply, we simply farm it out to poor people in other countries).
Getting back to your comments, yes capitalism pretty much dictates that people will buy their goods and services at the lowest price possible, (and employees can be considered services). According to your analysis, we can expect our standard of living to therefore drop considerably. (It's a shame we can't raise other countries standards of living, instead).
The reality is, farming out jobs to cheap labor is incredibly short sighted. I beleive Henry Ford once made a comment about needing to pay his factory workers enough so he'd have someone to sell his cars to. If enough work goes overseas that the standard of living in the US drops dramatically, who is going to buy the things you make? The underpaid workers in India?
In the near term, sending work overseas will cause more people to loss jobs, deepening the recession. Fewer people can now buy your product, so more cost cutting measures are necessary, (i.e. more people get laid off), and the economy is in perpetual decline.
The problem is, you are right about capitalism, and the above would seem pretty much destined to occur. (I know this hasn't occurred in past recessions, but there has been some cost in preventing it, such as the high national debt, the trade defecit, and the sale of major US companies and real estate to foriegn interests). Perhaps capitalism does need some outside guidance?
A career in IT is no longer attractive. But the people who whinge that the world is coming to an end because they can't get paid $80,000/year for programming any more deserve NO sympathy.
:-)
What few IT jobs are left will migrate to Bangla Desh/India etc. That's a fact. Suck it up. The world does not owe you a living. Instead of whinging, learn to do a job for which there's a demand.
And by the way, if you have a good idea along those lines, I'd like to hear it
I know I may get modded down for this, but I'll stand up for this particular point. If one looks back at all of the technological innovation in the past 50 years, the vast majority of it has come from within the United States. Telecom, semiconductors, software, you name it - if it was commercially viable, that commercial viability pretty much originated here. Now that the expertise is being outsourced, what will sustain further development of it here?
If you look at all the new grads coming out, they have been told time and again that technology is their ticket to success. They've been pushed through universities like cattle, but they never expected the slaughterhouse to be right at the exit. Now that there's a glut, economics is dictating huge competition driving down salaries. Tech suddenly isn't as sexy any more, and people are flocking to jobs at more traditional companies. Tech companies keep outsourcing more and more.
But let's move this one step further. People coming into university see this. They stop coming in. Innovation and research starts slowing down. Nanotech and biotech research vaporizes because the capital base that is partly cross-subsidizing it vaporizes slowly. There is no killer application driving the tech economy. We can do with what we already have.
What we may end up with is the majority of our technological manufacturing and knowledge base outside the United States. The United States (and, to a large extent, the rest of the Western world) could become dependent on foreign technology the same way it is dependent on foreign oil. Yes, many of these jobs being outsourced are staying within the foreign subsidiaries US companies, but the bulk of the knowledge is not on US soil. Those workers can walk away at any time without recourse for the US companies.
My point is that there are very serious implications for everyone's life in general. If the majority of the expertise and manufacturing ends up outsourced to what are effectively third world countries, we could be subjected to embargoes by cartels in the same way OPEC has power today. It could even impact national security, since overall research into technology could stagnate and the pool of available scientists and engineers dwindles.
If you think it can't happen, think again. It already has in large part. If not for cooperative trade agreements, many of the bulk goods coming into the United States would disappear overnight, from Tommy jeans to Sony TVs. This means that there may be greater reliance on the US military to protect us. Unfortunately, many of these countries possess big weapons that they didn't have 50 years ago. The US won't be able to push them around like they have already, and this will cause a loss of control.
So what can we do about this? We need to vigorously publicize the nightmare stories of outsourcing. We need to show homegrown successes. We need to get these people waking up before we end up hanging ourselves by our own rope. We need to prove that we are better than those working in third world countries. We need to show what made the United States a great country - hard work, perserverance, and a good brain.
OR
We had better give up now and accept a much lower standard of living, and all of the shock it will create. It will be either one scenario or the other. But not both.
That's what I said. Whats involved in writing decent VB code is the same stuff involved in writing decent code in any other language. They pick up the syntax in a couple days, we assume they have the skill already.
If you dont know what object oriented means, or what a property or method is, what a database is, or other basic concepts, you dont last more than a week here. We give them a task to do, and they can either do it or not.
Too many 'professional' programmers know a language, but not how to program.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Uh ok if salary is such a small portion of running a business then riddle me this: WHY DO THEY HAVE TO LAY ALL THESE PEOPLE OFF IF IT'S ONLY A "VERY SMALL PORTION"??
Manufacturing is THRIVING? I DARE YOU to find a pair of shoes, jeans, a motherboard, a dvd player made in America...I DARE YOU! I HAVE TRIED, they are EXTREMELY hard to find! You are probably some rich moron, listen if you come from a working class neighborhood where most families USED to work as manufacturing labor then you KNOW IT IS NOT THRIVING!
Maybe you took management 101 course in college, but if YOU HAD A CLUE ABOUT LABOR HISTORY, you would know that manufacturing in America is a tiny fraction of what it once was. Why would IT industry be any different? It's really HARD TO MOVE A FACTORY but it is EXTREMELY EASY TO MOVE CUBICLES. It's very expensive to SHIP TONS OF PHYSICAL GOODS around the world but it's very very cheap TO SEND SOURCE CODE AROUND.
Oh ya, maybe Bumfuck, Idaho doesn't have the same labor pool as say NEW YORK CITY? GEE, WHAT A FUCKING CONCEPT. But since universities in india, china and the philipines are churning out CS grads like crazy and Asian cities are GIGANTIC they will be quite juicy to businesses looking to slash costs.
Hmmm, and then how many startups ARE FUCKED right now because they signed leases in downtown SAN FRANSISCO because they wanted to be in the center of the action? Well all the employees are laid off and the fucking company is toast.
Don't take my word for it, just watch as the jobs disappear and never come back...
Option 2 would be the government stepping in to save jobs. Doing so would boost economy (whose going to buy products without a job?) and keep the overall economy from collapsing further than it already has.
Anyone who thinks that the government stepping in to protect our jobs and way of life is some evil plot needs to put down the bong.
We need to limint the H-1Bs, the L1s, and stop outsourcing. Now.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Since the government started granting charters for corporations being a public good? Since businesses get many tax benefits that individuals don't get and cry about "lost jobs" any time anyone talks about getting rid of them? Since our tax dollars pay for the promotion of their products to overseas markets? Since we send our sons and daughters overseas to protect their economic interests in other countries?
Perhaps they don't owe me a job, but they sure as hell owe some people in this country jobs for everything that we provide to them.
That is all.
Except, of course, the *definition* of 'First World' is "The US, and countries that wish they were (i.e. western Europe)". The definition of 'Second World' was then the USSR and other Evil Godless Commies(TM), and 'Third World' was everyone else.
So saying the US is "third world" basically destroys the definition, and without definition you can say anything you want. As long as I say that "cheese" really means "land south of Canada and north of Mexico", I can say that "The US is made out of cheese."
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
No - the CEO's first responsability to the shareholders and the economy is to maximize profits.
However, the CEO's company operates in a nation, and the CEO also has responsibilities to the nation and its people. This is why GM doesn't sell crack - yes, its profitable, yes, it would maximize profits, but the nation has decided that it would be a bad thing for the country. So they made it illegal.
They can make other things illegal. You can make other things illegal. The government belongs to you. Do something, moron.
People keep saying, the job are going to dissapear to India if we don't break our backs or work for peanuts. The same thing could have happened to architects a long time ago, but it hasn't. In order to become an architect, you need to be certified. You cannot raise a building in the United States without having a US architect's license. As a result, architects demand high salaries, while securing their marketplace.
I'm not thrilled about certification, but if it's going to ensure my way of life, then it's a price I'm willing to pay. I get a decent pay check, and the public gets quality software (or at least they think they do).
Its a 6 page Salon story about an out of work dot.commer who is looking for new work. Out of the blue a company in Atlanta contacts him and pays for him to fly down there from MA to interview for a job. Its absolutely hilarious. You've got to read it until the very end:
i ck en_show/index.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/12/ch
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Your assumptions have no relevance to reality. This isn't about MY ability to do my job.... (I think I smell a Libertarian here.... does anybody else?) It's about the laws in other nations that limit my ability to work there because THEY protect their workers in a way that WE don't.
But oh, I forgot. Anyone who doesn't get opportunity dropped in their lap and then decide that they've 'built their own life on their own' is just whining. My bad.
That Salon article was pretty depressing. But what's going to happen to these companies once the demand comes back? I mean, you're going to interview with the company and ask to talk to other people in the department to get a feel for the projects and company in general. Assuming these grossly underpaid people are still there, they probably won't paint a pretty picture for you. I just hope that the companies that are taking advantage of their employees now, will have an impossible time keeping them (and finding replacements) when this all clears up.
The myth is that computer vendors really care about support. You don't care how bad support is till after you buy the computer and something stops working. Support is no motivation to buy the computer - features are. Show me one person who starts their computer purchasing survey with the question "who has the best support?" Vendors know this and know then that they do not compete on support. So the lower the cost of support the better - just so you can say there is support. No one has good support really - so what difference does it make where the bad support is provided from. Can't understand the language - no problem. It is support right - we gave you support at 3:00 AM so what are you complaining about? And soon there will be computer generated support, text to speech synthesized support. You thin talking to a foreigner is bad, wait until you have to talk to an answering machine tied to an "expert system". Press 1 for yes, 2 for no. So "india" and "phillipines" is just a temporary phenomena. And We will all be out of work when the machines start talking to each other.
"Canada has much more open immigration policies and for the most part, is much stronger because of it"
The best reform of immigration policy is very simple: let any one who can work come to America, after rigorous security screening.
America, as you say, will be much stronger for it. Good workers can only help the country.
Perhaps they don't owe me a job, but they sure as hell owe some people in this country jobs for everything that we provide to them.
Then don't provide them with the benefits! Lobby your representatives, start a grassroots organization. I don't care. Point is, this is a problem with the US system of law, but has nothing to do with the economic principles surrounding the reponsibilities of a business, be it a large corporation or a small shop.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Americans just need to find something that they do well.
There are a finite number of things to do for money. Like I said, we can't all be fast food chefs and parking lot attendants.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Let's stop worrying about the jobs being lost in the U.S.. What goes around comes around... BBC:Indian tech boom under threat
This is greedy because it forgets all of the people in this country who've helped create the market as it stands. These companies wouldn't be nearly as big if it were not for the American people, and collectively, they're shipping many jobs off-shore and leaving Americans without jobs. It will only bite them in the ass later.
;)
If this trend continues (/chuckle) America will merely be a land of Middle Management and CEOs.
God save us.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
that is until the military starts to make things out of ceramics or carbon fiber instead of steel.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Things are never as bad as they seem during a recession, and never as good as they seem during a boom.
Certain programming jobs will go offshore, but not all. Embedded systems don't need GUI or Language skills, so those will go. Programming jobs that require human interaction skills will be less successful offshore because the cultural literacy of the U.S. isn't very good in India. That will drive up the costs of their production.
System integration will not go offshore at all, because many times you physically need to be on site to integrate the system.
During the past 10 years we (programmers) have been making an Economic Profit. Economic Profits only last until other competitors (local college grads, h1b folks) come in and compete for jobs, lowering the salaries to an equilibrium point. It isn't greed, it isn't mean-spiritedness, it isn't anti-patriotic, it is economics. Adam Smith defined the basic movement of the "Invisible Hand" over 200 years ago. As salaries go down, h1b folks leave the country, people change careers, and in general the supply of tech folks drop as people look for other ways of making money or acquiring skills.
When another boom starts, as it will, salaries will go up as demand outstrips supply, and then the big bucks will be rolling in again.
How can I be so certain? I am, because Tech is a boom & bust cycle with a period of roughly 4 ears. The headlines in the early 80's read "Silicon Valley is dead! The Japanese stole all our jobs!" In late 80's, PC's were the rage, the "Savior of the Economy". In the early 90's, George Bush (Senior) was blamed for wrecking "The Economy, Stupid!" In the late 90's, "The business cycle is dead, the New Economy is here!" Now they read "Silicon Valley is dead! The Indians stole all our jobs!"
Give it a couple of years, after the war costs have been absorbed and growth returns to the U.S. economy. That will spur demand at home for tech positions, and demand will ripple throughout the world for goods and services. The good times won't be far behind. Demand will outstrip supply, salaries will rise, and everyone will be yapping about the new "Economic Miracle".
An interesting fact, in the last election more working-class Americans voted for Bush than for Gore.
Considerably more interesting is that more people overall voted for Gore.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
"It's a shame we can't raise other countries standards of living, instead" We are, well, their standard of living is rising far more than ours is falling. rising productivity = rising standard of living its just about that simple. you are only worth what you can produce for someone else. If prices fall, your customers are better off. Prices fall because someone can produce for less than you can, meaning you have to find a way to be more productive (not necessarily in your current field of work), or accept being less well compensated.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
So what's wrong with making a profit?
Nothing. What's wrong is letting greed for an ever-higher profit leads to a company shipping U.S. jobs overseas, taking money out of the U.S. economy and leaving U.S. workers unemployed.
What makes you more worthy?
Because I'm an American. My tax dollars help support the country in which they exist. Americans have fought and died in wars to protect the economic interests of the corportations. When the government spends our tax dollars to buy goods and services, American companies want, and normally get, preferential consideration. It's even codified into federal law". American corporations have no trouble waving the flag and encouraging us to "buy American", but many of them don't seem to feel that they should reciprocate and buy American labor.
First Ammendment: Dems want to limit this so you can say whatever you want, as long as you never say anything that might insult even the most ignorant person of "minority standing." Can't talk about black racism, homosexual promiscuity or anything else that might offend them. Give the republicans back half a point on this one, but the overall freedom of speech score goes to the dems.
Abortion: Its worse than you say. Republicans are against birth control, which is the best way to prevent abortion. They're also against childcare and other things you need to raise that child they want you to have.
Labor: Dems lose points here. They talk pro-worker, but at the same time their multiculturalism and pro-immigrant stance prevents them from taking a line on massive immigration which undermines native-born workers. Republicans are notoriously quiet on this one as well.
Jail vs. Education: They both lose. Since we can't punish kids in school, nobody gets a good education. We can't punish them due to democratic multiculturalism -- kicking out the rowdy kids would kick out mostly blacks. We need both here -- kick the disruptive kids out of school. If it leads to jail, tough shit. Rich private schools are only of real benefit because their kids will shut the fuck up, pay attention and let everyone else learn.
Environment: I hate to see the land raped, but at the same time we gotta have houses. The left would have us crammed into massive Stalinist concrete apartment complexes instead of building single family homes ("High Density Urbanism"). And the left is generally anti development of any kind. It'd be nice to have a compromise of some kind that wasn't either side's extreme.
I do agree with your overall conclusions. The rich get richer, everyone else gets cornholed.
There are no laws keeping you from working elsewhere, IF YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH. You obviously are not, or you would have taken my advice in the spirit given. Instead, you want to suggest that somehow I had opportunities dropped in my lap. You are a victim (fool), that is why you cant find work elsewhere. When you knock it off, you might just get somewhere.
But hey, we cant all be good at what we do, can we. Some of us have to suck, I guess.
That's what it's all about!!
Most companies are not happy making 65% profit off their goods, they want more and become more greedy!! So what do they do?? They do stuff like this, they look for ways to increase case flow and in-turn increase profits. Basic...Basic...Basic...So companies will always look ways to lower salaries. Either go overseas or layoff poeple.
And this also relates to salaries...At what point would you be happy enuff with your current pay??? 60K,110K, 35k?????
I find that I don't care that someone is taking a lower pay job and shipping it overseas!! I wouldn't be doing that job anyway.
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
I must say that you are absolutly sure.
Comparing USA and Brazil (my country) until
before the Civil War, they almost identical
on any aspect.
Differences starts from that time, due to
US jumping on the Industrial bandwagon.
Normaly it's luck to join the wave on the
begining, but you should be competent to
stay ahead of it for so long.
Look at great forces of the past like greeks
or spanish, restricting to occidental
cultures, that are now 2nd. class countries.
Argentina in the XX century is also an example
of it, with a fast decay to 2nd world, joining
fast the 3rd world on the 90's.
So I guess now you can work at a 7-11 and make more money within 2 years than you can with a 4 year degree in computer science? Plus the payback of the student loans. Even if you make more in the long run the payback will take another 5-10 years. I am not sure that we will have any programming work in US by then...go into a trade while you are young and you still can.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
For a too brief period of time, I lived in an RV near the beach, in southern California. I had a health club membership for showers, and a P.O. box.
Perfect weather all year long, and not a care in the world. Every day I just did what ever I felt like doing. My living expenses where about $200 a month. I did a few temp jobs here and there.
But then I had to go to college get a house etc. Now I'm trapped.
It's a common slashdot question, "How much education do I really need? BS, MS, Neither?" Unless you are a guru in your field, you can't stop learning. People may bash having an MBA but to me it's the way to go. Diversification leads to survival. Remember, before you interview and can dazzle them with you skills/knowledge, you have to get in the door and that is based on a resume. If your company laid off it's employees tomorrow and you were fighting with you coworkers for jobs, what you have over them on a resume?
And yet, India holds regularly elections... it's, after all, a democracy (with more or less all of its faults... which are power-greedy politicians and narrow-minded people)
...and I'll say it again: if the hard-luck cases Salon is busting out are indicative of "tough times," then these people have NO idea what hard times are and they need to quit whining. Witness:
/. and it's just never-ending amusement. Spoiled fucking kids. Whew. I feel better. :)
"Market's job search, so far, has been less successful than he'd hoped. 'It used to be that if you were a smart programmer and could pick things up easily, they wanted to hire you,' he says. 'Now they want you to have done exactly what the last person in that job has done.' The average salary on offer is smaller as well. At his last job, Market was making about $125,000 a year -- which he concedes is large sum for someone his age. These days, 'the jobs I'm looking at are $80,000 or $90,000 for full-time,' he says. 'These are for actual development jobs, which I have a lot of experience in. I've written two books on Java.'"
$80-90,000 a year? You know what? Boo fucking hoo.
There are absolutely cases where good jobs are leaving and skilled people are left without a means to support themselves. Hell, my father is a tool and die maker, one of the absolute primo jobs to lose nowadays to automation and/or overseas workers. And yes, a LOT of people are unemployed right now. But the whining children in stories like this are really starting to piss me off. At least the guy I quoted seems to have genuine skills (two Java books); the cretins who think having screwed around with Dreamweaver in 1998 entitles them to upper-middle-class employment forever need to grow up.
And another thing: who the hell just sits around for a year, unemployed? What, you can't send in resumés if you're waiting tables, working construction, etc. etc.? There's literally NOTHING you can do for money other than monkey with Photoshop? Hell, I got laid off in 1999, was getting ready to apply at restaurants within a month, and was saved only by a call with my a job offer. Or...oh, is that work below the supa-cool web designers?
Seriously: we see these stories every so often on
-brennan
I was just readin his book yesterday in which he sez (one of)IBM's strategy was to provide outsourcing of IT services to companies such that "if it cost them 1000 dollars then IBM wld do it for 750" That plan more or less was one of the thngs that helped him bring IBM back to today. Now this very strategy is being used to bring down the costs to maybe 300 bucks by outsourcing to companies in different countries. So just coz now 'country' is involved in this solution does it change the soundness of strategy? NO!
I think what he is saying is not that we should be more protectionist, but that many places are more protectionist that the US. If coutries persist in having highly protectionist policies I say play Tit-for-Tat with them on trade policy. By the same token, that means that we need to remove some of our bad protectionist laws. We may be better than most countries, but we certainly are far from perfect.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
"Web designer" is a dead job, it is out there with "desktop publisher" or "typist." A few years ago, everyone was a web designer. Now even people who do have good design skills and can apply them in both Web and print mediums are dime-a-dozen.
Here in Washington, DC, everyone I know with hard programming skills (i.e. BSCS) are employed. IT folks without a college degree have more problems, but still most of them I know have found something.
A few IT folks I know have gone into mortgage sales and doing well (and no doubt following the next boom/bust cycle...)
Here's a factoid: I found my current tech job on the Net. My wife found her last job on the Net, and her current job in a University school newspaper (she is a web designer and found one of the last profitable content Web sites to work for...but she is also getting a second BS in CS on the side).
Your 'advice?' 'Well WRITE A BOOK LOSER!!!!!!!!'
Yes.... holding down a real job I have SO much time for that.
I shouldn't be feeding the troll... but I simply can't help myself.
You've been abusive and antagonistic from the beginning. Invective, insults and antagonism seem to be your forte. If you're an American working abroad, anti-American feeling in other countries becomes so much easier to understand...
You have nothing USEFUL to contribute, so you spew Libertarian rhetoric (whether you admit to being one or not....) and personal insults on the assumption that 'if you don't have facts, volume will compensate.'
"I talked about salary with a company last week, and they were paying between $30 and $35 an hour," said Donna Bradley, an IT specialist in Mesa, Ariz., who's been out of work since August 2002. "In August I was making $45 an hour."
Boo-hoo only $30-35 in the desert? I'm in Boston and most strictly IT stuff is $15-25... maybe if she were a manager, but then she should be talking salary not $/hr. I'm a hardware engineer and I only make the equiv. of ~$25/hr... so what?
"I bought my first house in 1999 -- that was a very big deal for me -- and now I have to sell it, only because they won't hire Americans. It's devastating."
They won't hire American's? It sounds more like American's won't take the jobs available!
I know, I know... it said she didn't get the job anyway, so she did at least try to get it...
But this whole article seems to be biased towards the "damn you foreigners" side of things... including the graphs which are formatted and scaled to look steeper then they really were.
I'm surprised this came from CNN, but I guess it was the money section... and whining that there are no high-tech jobs and that the country is doomed seems to be the en vogue thing to do these days.
and so is your web site:
- resume inflation has always been a problem. With this slump it'll only become worth, since people feel the need to pad resumes more.
- despite your argument that web developers weren't invloved in product cycle "From beginning to end" a lot of usefull web sites have survived. That's a good indication that the job was done properly in those cases (from creation to maintenance).
- Any engineering work or design work that may have been done by people employed by these dotcoms was irrelevant. What's up? So the person who created a product management system for e-commerce web site is less qualified that a person who wrote a similar system for brick-and-mortar shop? APIs may be different, problem to solve was the same.
- Not everybody jumped into "computers" with no clue just for money. There were a lot of folks who always wanted to work with technology, went to get CS education, followed web development because it was and WILL be a great technology, and in the end got screwed by the market.
For Gore's loss, you can either blame the founding fathers for putting the electoral college in the Constitution, or you can blame Ralph Nader.
I would suggest blaming Ralph. He knew he would likely spoil the election for Gore.
I know news like this is disturbing, and it gets to me too, but there may be alot of counter-trends that this article does not take into account:
- This is nothing new, and has been going on for at least 15 years according to the chart. The growth rate has been steadily increasing, but so has the US economy. According to the chart, in 1991-1992, about 3% of service imports were business or tech related. In 1998-99 it was almost 5%, yet it was almost certainly easier to get one of these types of jobs in the US during the boom years of 98-99 then it was during the 91-92 recession.
-No country, even India, has an inexhaustible supply of IT labor available for outsourcing. A lot of people are needed to support the infrastructure (networks, etc) of India and jobs like that. It's not just the US looking to these countries for labor. The more demand in those countries, the higher the pay goes, and retention becomes harder. My company has QA people in India, and we've already had some trouble keeping people there. Additionally, third world countries are unlikely to have successful H1-B type programs to attract more labor. In fact there's been somewhat of a brain drain as many of the brightest people from these countries took advantage of H1-B type programs in western countries, and left for good.
- A declining Dollar (as it has been lately) makes overseas salaries more expensive, and American labor more attractive.
- Cost is not the only factor when looking to hire people, if it was, why would companies ever locate to very expensive places like Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston? Businesses go where they can find labor. If an area has been hard-hit by layoffs, then that area will be even more attractive when the economy begins expanding again, because people will be willing to work for less then they used to make.
- It's not as though there is a finite supply of tech jobs. Tech has always had a way of creating lots and lots of jobs that are unfathomable to most people. (You might've wanted to be a fireman when you grew up, but you never would've said web page designer, for instance). Who knows what categories there may be in five to ten years? Smart out of work people can still start amazing companies, with or without venture capital. These new companies can create more categories of work and create new types of jobs. This was happening well before the dot-com boom, so I don't see why it would just stop. So a much larger labor pool may mean a larger number of jobs come into existance, some may have been impossible before because labor costs would've been prohibitive.
- Politicians, even Laissez Faire conservatives are not going to want to face a disgruntled constituency of workers, and lose all that tax revenue because people who used to make 100K/year are now working at McDonalds, and the companies that paid them moved to Hydrabad. This would be especially true of those in hard-hit areas. You would see not just protectionism (rightly or wrongly), but also incentives for businesses to locate.
Also, the article is a bit alarmist in tone, confusing the current downturn with the much longer-term trend of overseas outsourcing. The article makes it sound like this is something new, and you are about to lose your job because of it. They quote an economist from a "Labor think-tank in DC", probably not the most objective person. Also the quote from the woman complaining that jobs are "only" paying $35/hr instead of the $45 she used to make was just silly, that's to be expected because of the current downturn, not this other trend.
So in short, this trend is worth watching, but you probably shouldn't lose sleep over it just yet. Jobs will be available when the economy recovers, they may not pay dot-com era salaries, but they'll be above average.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
Unfortunately everybody old enough to remember 1903 is dead.
Lets see a show of hands for those whom worked in the IT industry only to be driven out because we wouldn't play our supervisor's stupid games.
*raises hand*
Abusive is a word that only women use. Go cry in your corner, bitch.
If they cut basket-weaving, nobody would care. Taxes would remain flat, or even lower. The power of politicians to control the lives of their citizens is diminished.
If they cut libraries, police, and fire departments, people scream. Taxes can then be raised. The power of politicans to control the lives of their citizens is raised.
Ever notice how it's never the basket-weaving and other pork-barreling, that gets threatened with cuts when tax revenues fall, and always the schools, cops, and firemen? Funny, isn't it?
I guarantee you that those college educated foreign workers have withstood more competition and rigor than you are ever likely too, and they deserve the new consideration that they are recieving from American corporations. Overseas much more than over here, the cream rises to the top.
The problem with paying foreigners to work for american companies is the answer to the question, "Where is money to pay them coming from?" The answer is, the American public and companies. Since I'm the one buying computers, software, etc., and not the poor folks in India, I should be the one getting paid to create the stuff. A lot of Americans have worked very hard for a long time to create one of the most powerful economic countries in the world. Why should the rest of the world benefit from that hard work, while we suffer?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
If you think that the law doesn't have anything to do with economics, and you think that businesses (large ones) don't spend zillions of dollars to make certain the law favors them, often to the detriment of the public, then you're a freakin' moron.
No offense.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Let me tell you about the machine I ordered from Dell FIVE years ago:
Computer arrives 1 week after order, wow fast. Hook up computer, double-check connections, turn it on. Beeps and nothing displays on the monitor. Turn it off. Look up beep codes in manual, find them. Turn computer on, count beeps: 4-4-2-4. Not in manual.
Call Dell tech support, 25 minute wait...
Tech support guy#1: sorry we're not trained on these, let me transfer you to someone who is.
Transfer, 5 minute wait: "hi you've reached special tech support our normal hours are 7am to 7pm CST m-f, please call during our business hours. goodbye. CLICK"
Crap. Call Dell tech support, 35 minute wait...
Tech support guy#2: sorry we're not trained on these, let me transf...
Me: hold on there cowboy, someone did that to me before, and no one was there.
Tech support guy#2: that's impossible
Me: no, really, I heard it with my own ears
Tech support guy#2: okay, let me check (5 minutes later) they are there, I talked to them
Me: okay, thanks, put me through
1 hour and 10 minutes later,
tech support guy#3: hi how can I help you
me: first off, let me get one of those express service codes
tsg#3: okay, hold on (couple of minutes)
tsg#3: how can I help you?
me: um, first, I need that express service code
tsg#3: right, it is: (gives me the express service code) how can I help you?
me: I'm getting a beep code when I turn the computer on: 4-4-2-4
tsg#3: 4-4-2-4, let me look that up (couple of minutes) okay that's a missing jumper on the motherboard, that's bad. could you open your machine?
me: yes, hold on (I open up the machine)
tsg#3: it should be next to the clock battery, J8A1
me: nope, no jumper
tsg#3: okay there should be one there
me: nope, how did it ship without a jumper?
tsg#3: it may have come off during shipping
me: okay, well could you send me a new one
tsg#3: well the postage would be more than the cost of the jumper
me: o-kay
(what I should have said: WELL I JUST PAID $2534 FOR THIS F****ING MACHINE HOW ABOUT SPENDING THE EXTRA 29 CENTS AND DELIVERING A NEW JUMPER?)
later, I found part of the jumper in the computer. I shook it out of the power supply cage.
4 hours later and I have one non-functioning Dell XPS R400 purchased for $2534.
but I got it in only one week!
MESSAGE TO DELL: buy the fancy jumpers, the ones that don't shake off. or else provide Radio Shack coupons with your machines. that's where I'm going tomorrow.
Example: All those oil wells in Saudi Arabia and Iraq were not built by men in turbans. They had neither the knowledge or the forsight about how to get that oil out of the ground. They hired Americans, French and British engineers to find, pump and produce that oil.
I could give you more examples, but thats enough of this thread. The point is, countries will have you, if you have something to offer them. Our pal here, either has nothing, or doesnt have the stomach to find out. This country should not fear a little competition from outsiders. It makes us better. Anyone who doesnt want to compete, probably cant.
Our sensitive friend wants the government to protect him from his own shortcomings.
now quit your whining you pinko commie - you have no right to a job !!! get off your ass and sucking of the public teat!!!
the above is sarcasm
... hi bingo
Yes... you 'da man. We all bow before your might.
Of course it's not nearly as difficult to get jobs in other countries when you already work for a multinat.... and I'm sure that 'full time' job at MS kept you so busy... what with their vacation plan, sabbatical and other benefits.
We should all go work for Microsoft then! Won't that be FUN?!?!?!?!?
I believe the term I'm looking for here is.... 'festering troll.'
felt my ass...
they took a risk with a company, failed, and walked away with millions.
i'd be feeling really horrible somewhere in aruba sipping mai-tai's.
felt bad my ass - i guess thats why all those CEO's of failed dotcoms commited suicide...
... hi bingo
American companies have to compete against highly skilled companies in other countries. Up until you have had money enough to buy inventions, companies and innovations from abroad. Ofcourse that cant be forever. When these countries start to manufacture things instead of just selling all bright ideas abroad they can compete very hard against USA. Since American labour is more expensive the competing products is all the same but one bears a higher pricetag. Since USA has lost its headstart in knowledge it has to start competing on a more or less even playfield. To do that USA needs to be cheaper at manufacturing, take the auto industry as a good example of that. The asians ran circles around GM.
Either some very silly laws stalling the invention climate needs to be removed or big lossess of jobs will be a fact.
It may come as a surprise to most of you americans but the school system you have isnt the best in the world anymore. The invention climate is also a minefield where it sometimes isnt worth the hassle to capitalise a perfectly sellable product due to stupid patents and other IP laws.
HTTP/1.1 400
Believe me, it's been more than a generation of students that have been shortchanged by our primary/secondary education system.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Dude, I dont think you could ever make it through the first round of interviews with your loser attitude.
Better to be a festering troll to a whining loser, than to be the whining loser. Good luck getting beyond your borders, you clown.
I dont care if you dont like what I said, I HATE WHINERS! If you had any balls, you would take up the challenge to prove me wrong.
Oh, and you forgot the kick-ass health club, the expense account, and the subsidized housing. So busy indeed. Now, take the last word, I am done with you.
Translation: Young person with little to no computer knowledge or experience, and most likely not even a degree, accepts incredibly simple tech related job for high pay. Bubble burst, incompetent web admin with no real ability lose their jobs.
Tanya Bershadsky says, "It's kind of embarrassing to tell people you worked on the Web. It's got this weird stigma attached to it now -- when you say what you do, people know you're unemployed
Translation: Whaaaaaaa, why do people patronize me? I'm a web admin! I'm a 1337 uber-hax0r HTML-programmer!
Tanya Bershadsky now wants to work as a publicist. "When the Web economy collapsed, I felt that I had to reinvent myself," she says. Now she's doing some part-time P.R. work, but permanent work in that industry isn't easy to come by, either
Web Economy? Lucrative WEB MASTER jobs are a PIPE DREAM you looney! You're lucky you had it when you did. "Reinvent" my ass, develop some real skills, pick up a C programming book or something. No web master should dare to bitch if they're expected to know Flash or Javascript. HTML is a damned joke.
Cretons.
There's always one. Ok, here it is:
This sentence:
The fact is that human beings do have rights, and that these rights are more important than corporate "rights" (or in other words, the "rights" of those millions to enjoy unlimited profit making potential).
was supposed to be:
The fact is that human beings do have rights, and that these rights are more important than corporate "rights" (or in other words, the "rights" of those who own millions of dollars to enjoy unlimited profit making potential).
I should add to that too. The reason you want to limit wealth is because you have to look at the motivation for owning billions of dollars. When talking about billions of dollars, you are no longer talking about wealth, but instead are talkin about power. When the top 0.25% of the population makes 80% of the campaign contributions, and 95% of those with the larger campaign financing wins their election, then it becomes obvious that the ultra-rich are having a huge influence on our democracy. The reason you need to limit wealth is in order to prevent a dictatorship of the wealthy. When it comes to buying our democracy, Bill Gates et al. have no "rights". Period.
The US really does have more advanced medical care than most of the world, generally speaking. The problem the US has is that our healthcare is also much more expensive in general. Of course, like any other brand new technology, only the rich can afford to be early adopters. We have larger legal costs (which don't exist when the doctor is an employee of the gov't which you cannot sue for big $), we also have a generally broken "insurance system", that encourages free riders, which was adopted in WWII to get around wage controls (give employees insurance cause you can't raise their wages). And lastly, we have tons of federal regulations and a difficult drug approval process. Now im not saying all regualtions are bad and that we should pay for everything out of pocket, but the current system has problems that need to be addressed. And federalizing the whole thing doesn't fundamentally fix those problems, it just removes choices.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
This very thing is happening at my current company. I worked at a small, profitable company in a niche industry. Nine months ago, our company was bought up by a corporation that, as far as I can tell, exists to buy companies to increase their revenues and profits. Most business people will tell you that this type of thing can only work if the purchasing company is able to make the purchased companies grow.
Well, now we are being told that the company is looking to outsource software jobs. In essence, we are being asked to train our own replacements. Not a huge surprise, but it will be interesting to see how well it is done. This is a very niche industry, with much communication and industry specific knowledge needed to do the work I'm not at all confident that outsourcing abroad is an appropriate solution for our needs right now.
When this happened in manufacturing, the pundits said that the America of the future was going to be an idea based, value added economy. It was argued that the high paying jobs created by our superior educational system would maintain our dominance in the future. Now the same thing is happening with these high requirement jobs. America is becoming a nation of investors, marketers, and sales people.
I'm not quite what, if anything, should be done about this.
The government regulations are so tough in the us that it is way to expensive to operate manufacturing in the US. Of course now that there are so many regulations it would take far too many lawyers and too much money to rework it all so that it wouldn't be impossible for companys to stay.
In the immortal words of C3PO "we're doomed"
---
Fortunately not everyone is an arrogant, boorish twit who's sole claim to success is 'being in the right place at the right time,' who then refuses to accept that fact.
I guess the rest of us poor plebes will just have to carry on..... working our asses off while you superior ubermensch types take credit for random chances.
You seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you, or hasn't had everything handed to them is somehow 'whining.'
You're through because you have no argument. Just baseless attacks. In that sense you've been through since your first post.... you just didn't realize it.
Have a nice life asshole.... Just remember when you actually have to start working for your success that some of us have had to do that from the start.
Loser pays is not the same as the Bush plan to limit damages for pain and suffering. It means that legitimate malpractice net awards get larger (as your lawyer fees are no longer deducted from your winnings) while fraudulent claims don't just get dismissed, the fraudsters get billed for the legitimate expenses of the defense.
More money from bad doctors, no monetary pain to fight when a doctor's in the right, malpractice fees would go down for good doctors and go up for bad ones.
Oh, and it'll never happen because the trial lawyers bar owns the Democrat party and won't stand for it so the Republicans are shooting for a poor substitute instead.
I guess there were no American Web Applications Engineers left to fill the spot.
Michael Loves Me!
I am glad I decided to become a teacher. can't move that over seas :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I'm getting tired of this whole "This is good because it will improve global economy, so adapt or die." crowd.
:)
This will NOT improve global economy, this will improve local economy of OTHER countries. Do you think India is going to stop taxing American imports just because a very, VERY small minority of the population is getting paid well by third world standards? Are they going to start outsourcing their jobs back into the US? I doubt it. So corporations make some money from cheap labor, because the country they outsourced to doesn't have labor laws, the outsourced country is only slightly better off, and we have Americans who can't find work to feed their own families. I fully admit I CAN'T compete with an 8 year old chinese boy in a sweatshop. I would never WANT to compete for that job, and no one should have to live with that kind of job, just to survive. If you want to rememdy the global economy, human rights MUST come first, as money is just a measurement of a human time.
Also, as an American, I have given my governemnt certain rights over me, so that they can work in good faith toward my best interest and the best interests of the American people, not so that they can make the world a better place. I could give less of a shit if my job supports an Indian Family who were previously impoverished, if now MY family is impoverished.
If employers are allowed to ship our jobs off to foreign countries with no penalty, rather than hire us to produce their product/service, then I should be able to ship in products and service from foreign nations without penalty or tarrif.
So explain to me how it is a fair playing field when corporations can undercut salary expenses by shipping jobs to foreign countries, while still being protected from Industry in those foreign countries underselling the same product/service over here?
It also undercuts traditional American values. We are beggining to no longer be the land of oppurtunity. If Americans can't get jobs, aliens can't either. So instead of a bright, well trained Indian worker coming over here to have a high standard of living, he has to stay in his home country, getting paid next to nothing and still living in third world conditions.
And to all the +5 Informatives spouting "Americans think just because they are American and have an education they have the right to a high standard of living and a decent job.", all I have to say is, You are god damn right we do. My father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc.. fought to give me that right, and I would fight to give my kids the same right. Why should I have to lower my standard of living so others can raise theirs? It's not like we've always been on top in the global economy, we made it there, and we made it there for ourselves, not for others, although we are gracious in letting others join in. Why should we sacrafice our high standard of living instead of foreigners sacraficing their nationality? If you want what we got, then you can come to America, but America should NEVER come to you.
I know, I know, I'm rambling in my digression. I do tend to get upset when I see non-Americans blaming the US for whatever is wrong with their countries. (ie. chinese bitching about US tax imports instead of 0 chinese labor laws).
I see a few -1 Flaimbaits coming, but oh well, this is how I feel
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
"How is it not a good thing if it is part of competition?"
In an environment where the wages are relatively close I would agree with you. However, corporations (and this has everything to do with corporations) are moving their businesses to locations where they can get the absolutely lowest labor. You and I cannot compete. We simply cannot afford to work for wages that low because our local economy won't allow it.
"It is not controlled by corporations. It is a situation where individuals are able to make decisions while having to pay tribute to rulers less and less. That is all tariffs are: rulers trying to get a cut of our decisions to do transactions across borders."
Sure it is controlled by corporations. It is not the mom and pop businesses that are moving out of country it is only corporations (And possibly a few private businesses owned by the very wealthy.)
"This, as with almost everything else, has nothing to do with corporations."
Like I said before, this has everything to do with corporations. It is not the small un-incorporated businesses that are relocating to find cheaper labor.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Oh I wasn't saying it was the same as loser pays. I was arguing that the "tort reform" touted by those currently in power is a masquerade, that's all.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
I think most of the Republican Party's core values are good, and would benefit this country, so voting Republican is a pragmatic decision to get those policies implemented. ...if they would actually implement them. That's the problem with the Republican party -- they do exactly the opposite of what they say they're going to do. They run on a platform of fiscal conservatism, but when they get there they spend us into the poorhouse. This has been true of every Republican administration of the last 30 years (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I), and now it's happening again.
The other problem is that Republicans have a "lets' starve the beast" attitude toward government, rather than the "let's manage this better" attitude that's needed. After all, some functions of government *are* necessary. This ensures that any money that is spent is just throwing good money after bad, which is worse than spending a lot but actually getting something for it.
Finally, the Republican party does not tolerate healthy debate or dissent within its ranks. Anyone who goes against party bosses' wishes is punished or marginalized. I used to be a registered Republican, until I figured out that they really are a bunch of fascists.
Liberal-conservative is a phony paradigm that defines the parameters of the debates in a rather silly fashion
I agree, it's a model that no longer resembles reality in any way. Both parties have their big spenders and tighwads, both parties have their Bible-thumpers and libertines, and both parties have their big-money "clients" (often the same ones). But as a "small-l," "social" libertarian who puts a high value on pragmatism, I find myself completely orphaned these days.
Insightful, and potentially effective. Consumer uproar has altered business practices like child labor in foreign countries.
Unfortunately, people like their products cheap, and people like their 401k investments to grow at 8% a year, every year. I think you'll get everybody to agree, but not many to act.
In India, one of the main ways in which workers strike back at their employers during a labor dispute is to feign incompetence. In these call centers, the people are required to fake American accents and even use American names and have enough clue about life in America for small talk. If the guy who answered your phone was speaking with an Indian accent, the people there were preparing for a strike.
Frankly, some of us could learn from them.
I have seen a lot of outsourcing going on, mostly to India, but to be honest, these typically aren't the most interesting jobs. Sure, they are the bread and butter for some of us but they are mostly jobs involving maintaining older code bases, debugging and testing code, doing phone support, internationalizing previously released software, and doing pure programming (not software design/engineering) of problems that have been completely spec'ed out.
IMHO, much of the really interesting work will stay in the US (and Europe) because it requires people to be close to their customers and do innovative problem solving and design. For instance, if your company/team is trying to create a new product to solve problem X for customer Y and the problem is poorly understood and poorly described, you are best off visiting the customer, spending time watching how the customer works, learning what the customer's tasks are like and how you can support them, and involving the customer in tight-loop interative design. This type of work is SO much easier when you are in the same or similar time zone as the customer. The power of being able to hop in the car to drive to their site or take a short flight to the next state (and be home in the evening) means a lot to the management of both the customer and provider.
Scheduling phone conference calls with India is a really pain in the backside. Everyone I know who has to do it gripes and bitches. Flying to India takes a long time, is very expensive and requires way more planning than driving or flying in the US/CA. Finally, if I want to be in regular communication with a customer, complete with multiple site visits, even the distance between the east and west coasts of the US can become a really pain in the rear. The distance between the US and India (the OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH) is just too damn unbearable. I watched on company attempt to divide innovative design between India and the US and it was an unmitigated disaster, resulting in the company entering death throws.
I spent all of those years as Anonymous Coward and all I got was this lousy number (204976).
This has been a trend for several years in my industry ( automotive ).
Its just now effecting IT people ( me included i got hit by both industries taking a nose dive ).
But its nothing new is my point.. You just have to adjust/retool/etc... good luck..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you take a step back and evaluate what's really happening, I'm not sure this is all as negative as people make it sound.
If all western companies start outsourcing enormous amounts of jobs to low-cost countries, the spending power of their market (the place where they are firing people as well as selling their goods) is greatly reduced.
So, yes, they all end up being more cost efficient, but because people have less money to spend they have to lower their prices on the home markets where they fired all their employees. Unless they start selling to the people in the low-cost countries, but then the wages there will have to go up again, which nullifies the cost-reduction benefit.
My point is: economic gains are not created out of thin air. It isn't as simple as everyone just moving things overseas and every company suddenly making triple profits. What goes in comes out and vice versa.
Now someone mentioned that the global economy is not a zero sum game. The great thing is, it is not: someone is actually benefitting from all this!
Not the companies or the fired employees, for them it's a status quo in the long run. The people who will reap the benefit of this are those in the low-cost countries who suddenly find their economy booming. Which in turn will mean their wage costs will go up as well, etc. etc.
Open markets have a tendency (especially for non-location tied goods) to drift towards a common, market efficient price-level, because inefficiencies cease to exist because of arbitrage. Consider this for a moment and then think about basic economical theories such as pareto efficiency and the resulting optimal wealth level.
These things are long-term benefits though, it's often hard to see past the perceived short term losses for the people who are on the receiving end of a cutback.
I expect the FRG to come under much more fiscal stress in the near future as US force repositioning is going to leave them without US bases to cover their irresponsibility in future.
Care to extrapolate on this one a bit?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Companies have slowly gained (bought?) the same rights as an individual under the law. It has gone too far IMO. Corporate charters used to be relatively easy to yank. Now it is nearly impossible.
A corporation is NOT a person and does not deserve a (de facto) vote. No voter movement approved of or lobbied for H-1B's, for example. It was purely the money of big corps that got the H-1B laws passed. If this was a true democracy, then the H-1B laws would be dead or much better monitored.
This nation is supposed to be a democracy, NOT a mulacracy (mula-ocracy). Corporate power needs to be castrated. Chop off one ball. I used to be more pro-business WRT politics, until they shot me directly in the ass with their H-1B arrow.
Table-ized A.I.
You forgot option 4:
Worker's salaries are slashed so much they no longer buy anything the company makes. Local companies in India (or wherever) make a similar knock-off product for 10% less. Company bleeds red until they file chapter 11.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
You wouldn't happen to be French or German would you? :)
You think it's easy coming to the US and work? The US has one of the most cumbersome and complex immigration systems in the world. Neither is that anything new--the restrictions started early in the 20th century. While groups that don't have much to lose (migrant workers, refugees, etc.) aren't affected much by that, for skilled foreign labor, those restrictions are real.
Most of Europe? I have to either be independantly wealthy... (be able to prove I can support myself for a given number of months) or have a business to start up. (No.... websites don't count.)
European countries have large percentages of legal foreign workers, more than the US in many cases. Visa requirements and procedures are much simpler and more straightforward.
And the reason it isn't relaxed further is because these agreements are reciprocal and the US doesn't want to relax their requirements any further. I think most Europeans would probably be happy with an arrangement similar to that between the US and Canada.
When I actually CAN 'follow the jobs' the way people from other countries can, we can talk.
I suspect the main reason you "can't" is because you don't meet the requirements. Do you speak French and German fluently? Do you know how to dress for an interview or business meeting in Paris, London, or Berlin? Do you know how to write a resume to send to a Swiss company? Do you know the geography and history of the various European nations? Things like that are important for landing jobs in Europe; merely being a good C/Java hacker and speaking English is not enough. That may not be a good thing, but it isn't protectionism. And the US has lots of equivalent hidden requirements, it's just that we don't notice because we don't see it.
As it is, I'm competing with foreign workers, college educated (at no cost to themselves generally, or they're from one of the few wealthy families in their home region,) who are willing to do the same job for less money because they don't care about having an american standard of living even tho they're living in america, and they aren't as deep in debt as I am from student loans.
Quite right. And you should be angry about that, but not with other governments that provide decent education for their citizens, but with the US government.
It needs to be said again: the visa requirements and work permits between the US and Europe are based on reciprocity, and the sticking point to relaxing them further is US politics. The Europeans really wouldn't mind much--they know that most Americans would neither be able to nor willing to work in Europe anyway, no matter how open the borders become.
Fuck lobbying, what ever happened to democracy?
Tipper Gore proposed stickers on music that would indicate when graphic sex and violence was on the recording. I was against it at the time, but I was also a teenager and very much in love with the recordings that she wanted my parents to be warned about. If my mom knew what was on some of those tapes, I would not have been able to buy them, so I was against Tipper.
However, there was much, much worse censorship happening at the same time. Many foreign journalists were kept out of the country because of views that had about America's involvement in Nicaragua, among other things. These law (bill? order? rule? not sure) was made by and for the Reagan Administration as a CYA measure to keep those "in the know" from coming here and spreading the truth. It was also used to keep out certain "dangerous" rock bands. One of which was The Pet Shop Boys (or was it Depeche Mode? It's been a while), one of the least "dangerous" bands I can think of.
and in other news, the things that Lieberman has proposed are also far worse than Tipper's ideas.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
you have absolutely no way of knowing what "more americans wanted". All you know is how many voted. A LOT of people don't bother voting in my state because it is a forgone conclusion that Republicans will win in my state. 16% or so vote. You know what that 16% wants, but you have no idea what the rest want.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Just another bit of evidence to add to the case that the world is overpopulated, and needs to reduce number of human inhabitants.
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
Fine, so you are saying: you don't want free trade. Many countries are saying the same thing. But it is the US and its democratically elected government that is pushing most strongly for free trade.
A lot of Americans have worked very hard for a long time to create one of the most powerful economic countries in the world. Why should the rest of the world benefit from that hard work, while we suffer?
And what do you think people do in the sweat shops of India or China? Sit around and sip tea all day? Americans don't work harder than many people in developing nations. America's wealth and power is a combination of a decent political system, some enlightened policies in the 19th and 20th century, and lucky historical accident. And it is certainly not something anybody generation after generation is entitled to in perpetuity.
Romans or Arabs could make the same statements you do: they worked hard for their wealth and empires, and they lost it, too. And, in fact, your argument is not all that different from all the Arabs that are belly-aching about their lost empire.
Nobody is entitled to wealth, and certainly not because of their ancestry or historical accident. You get what you get. Count yourself lucky that you were born in such a wealthy country, but don't expect it to last--it never does.
...fon't look like "tech jobs"; they're more creative jobs. After all, if your credits are Photoshop and Flash, I'm sorry, but that doesn't make you part of the technology sector.
That doesn't make the article wrong or bad. But I can't see comparing a programmer fluent in UML and Java as related at all to somebody using photoshop and flash.
Median family income is no longer based on one income, more like 1.7 incomes. It also requires 2 cars (instead of one, so that 16k accord is 16k * 2). While the median FAMILY income may have been 54.4k the median income was probably a little more than half that. So wages have been falling like a rock, it's just that more people are working.
Until our children are no longer molded into castrated sheep democracy remains a fake and a danger. -A. S. Neill
The going rate for an Indian programmer is about $8-$9/hr. You'll note the US minimum wage is $5.50/hr.
No one is paying programmers $1/hr.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The major union problem we have is the teacher's union. We have a skills gap because we're not teaching well in the K-12 arena and we end up with university students who have to take remedial education courses to catch up.
Please. Do you really think schools were created to teach anyone anything? Did you learn anything in school of any meaningful value? Why did ancient Athens not have comulsory education while Sparta did? Why did Socrates say that teachers can do nothing but corrupt?
Schools were created to first teach obedience and conformity. The motives were primarily to prevent rebellion. The secondary motive was to create the craving of novelty and acquiesence to authority which is a necessary part of our wage slave/consumer society. The 19th century lifestyle of frugality and high quality construction is incompatible with a consumer society. Schools are and have always been a tool of creating and maintaining a caste system.
You see, back before the word "adolescence" or "puberty" existed, youthful rebellion didn't involve the nonsensical escapism we have today. Instead of escaping the world by playing video games or getting fucked up on whatever drug of the moment, they actually attempted to change it through revolution. Youthful rebellion used to be the real deal. 12 years of education erased that phenomenon. Look up Admiral Faragett. He was one of the first captains in the early US Navy. He was only 12 years old when he first took command.
Further, a people not trained to listen to authority are not responsive to the pathetic dictates of business, ie marketing. Thats why the only real examples of outright manipulation in the 19th century was in the addictive drug industry. Coca-cola and cocaine. Bayer with Heroin. Philip-Morris with Tobacco. They had to keep people consuming by truly making them addicted. Today, it is a gigantic scheme of social engineering, and it starts with compulsive schooling.
Education is doing exactly what it is intended to do, make people as stupid and subserviant to authority as possible. It is the new form of slavery. Why keep a man in shackles when you can create a prison for his mind.
Highly paid, rigid labor markets are on full display in France and Germany. Compared to our unemployment rate, they're perenially stuck at 10% give or take, a much worse figure. The union effect is real.
No they are just a harbinger of the future. Learn to deal with it. Supply and Demand applies to people just as it does to products. The reality is the supply of people far exceeds the demand. We do not need 8 billion people to make all the useless shit in our world. From a productive standpoint humans are not merely expendible, they are almost entirely unnecessary.
Now if you believe that, good for you. However, history has shown us that people relegated to the status of irrelevant by the power of the day will do anything... especially anything violent. People who have nothing to lose have a nasty habit of getting really pissed off. Be prepared for the natives to get restless.
Economics is not a true science, is the measurement of the false social order created by sociologists. You will find in history that Sociology came before economics, and that sociology was originally intended to foster social engineering. Today it is a bunch of whining females, but in 1900 they did all sorts of fun stuff like impliment eugenics programs. Indiana was the first government in history to impliment a sterilization program of undesirables. Even Germany didn't start that business until the 30's. Guess what they called it, the Indiana Plan.
I could go on in on, but you are living and thinking in the academic universe, which is a fiction. Give it up, its all a lie.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I'd mod you up. I think it's a load of crap that political party has anything to do with the economy too. Sometimes.
other times I see how easily a trend can propagate itself through the market, and I see how much influence a president has, and I can easily see that it does make a difference.
I guess we'll never be able to scientifically prove it one way or another, I'd love to be in the control group with no president, or the "fixed" economy and several presidents. but alas, that's why we have slashdot.
thanks for a point of view that said something other than "nuh-uh, clinton did it"
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
won't presume to speak for you, but as for me, I'm not prepared to do that. As a citizen of a Western nation in a capitalist economy, I was born into the top 15% of the planetary socioeconomic pyramid. I like it here. I'm staying here.
It's not your choice. And it's certainly not your right. Your sense of entitlement is sickening.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Maybe what you say is true. But one (well, two) things you said struck home, since they're necessary even here, not just overseas.
Do you have a name and reputation that is known to those you would want to work for? No? Why not, loser?
Because I'm a college undergrad, who switched programs with 3 years gone of the mythical '4-year' bachelor's program.
Do you know how to market yourself? No? Why the fuck not, loser?
You're full of wisdom; teach me! I'm a soon-to-be college grad, with a year or two of experience. I've worked as a teaching assistant, a web lackey, and a support tech.
However, I know only a few programming languages passably. My GPA is average. And I have no connections in the area, because my 'bosses' either work in academia, don't want to recommend me, or live thousands of miles away (I can't afford to move; not done with the degree yet.) I already work more than 50 hours each week, between school work and working to pay my room and board. I have little time to work on more projects, as that would likely plummet my grades.
To sum up: I have no contacts, few skills, and I haven't even completed my degree. HOW am I supposed to market myself, again?
Maybe I'm bitter. But you, sir, have a bad attitude.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
And of course, you think that realistically, demand can and will produce itself for 8 billion people in the world, especially when production is now globalized.
Supplay and demand works for people just like it does for goods. If the supply of some good (people/slaves) exceeds demand (jobs), the price of the good (slaves) falls. Big Shock.
Of course, do we really want to return to an era when people are treated as any disposable good, valued only for their productive capabilities like a machine?
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Who cares if the jobs aren't coming back? The important thing is to create new jobs. There is no such thing as "job security" and their never has been. As long as you depend on someone else for a job you are in trouble. You need to keep your resume polished, and a list of potential partners for startup companies handy. However, true security only comes when your passive income (i.e. cashflow from investments) covers your living expenses. I hope to be there in ~20 years. In the meantime, look for the opportunities that the outflux of jobs creates, and take advantage. (I.e. think of what can be done with experienced tech people who are currently unemployed).
Actually the Union did not go on strike, the workers were locked out of the dock. The Port Authority locked the workers out.
_ Ta lks_Continue_-_700_Workers_Locked_Out.html
http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/2002/09/30/Port
Until our children are no longer molded into castrated sheep democracy remains a fake and a danger. -A. S. Neill
I thought I was over this cliche. Guess not...
....
In A.D. 2001
Recession was beginning
US: What Happen?
Dubya: Somebody set up us the 9/11
NASDAQ: We get sell signal
dot.coms: Venture capital turn off
US Business: It's you!!
Cheap foreign labor: How are you gentlemen!!
Cheap foreign labor: All your jobs are belong to us
Cheap foreign labor: You have no chance to survive in the US, move your jobs in time!
Cheap foreign labor: HA HA HA HA
US Business: Outsource every 'business function'
US Execs: You know whose job you're saving
Outsourcing companies: Move 'jobs'
US Business: For great quarterly report
or environmental laws. Eliminate anything that gets in the way of making a profit. UA was in trouble because of (highly paid) management decisions (leveraging itself with too many loans to try and grow fast to attract stockholders).
Until our children are no longer molded into castrated sheep democracy remains a fake and a danger. -A. S. Neill
Fine, so you are saying: you don't want free trade. Many countries are saying the same thing. But it is the US and its democratically elected government that is pushing most strongly for free trade.
No, the US government isn't "pushing most strongly for free trade". They've continually rejected free trade agreements from other countries, and given massive subsidies to farmers, while keeping large tarrifs on imports from competing nations.
The Australian Government has been pushing the US Government for years to get a bilateral free trade agreement, and successive US administrations have rejected it. They want to keep their protectionist policies in place as far as their farmers are concerned.
Two years ago, I worked for a company that had a department in Egypt, and when layoffs occurred, they only occurred for us here. The Egyptians were skilled and intelligent, but they were not as well-trained in software engineering as the average US college graduate. They could write code, but they were not well-versed in different operating systems, and I probably would not expect them to have had any training in algorithmic complexity or other techniques that frequently help with design of a system.
But this was not an example of outsourcing. This was someone giving people in his former country a chance to succeed, and these people were not programmers of the level you'd expect to be graduating from a decent US university. These people were not given the tasks that those of us who were laid off were given; those tasks ended up being done by the founders, or no one at all.
This article is very cleverly written, and does a terrific job of trying to stir up trouble -- just look at the number of posts to this article!
Note that when comparing foreign wages to ours, the author of the article specifically chooses to mention -programmer- and -project manager- salaries.
Yet all of the "I.T." jobs that are being outsourced that the article mentions are for -call centers-. Tech support. The bottom of the barrel for I.T. The article also fails to disclose the sort of jobs the person it mentions was looking for and holding, and even then it has to give the disclaimer that her case is not normal!
I don't see demand in the United States for highly-skilled and trained Software Engineers diminishing. And the amount of code still needing to be written in the world is still growing much faster than the educated base of potential employees, as more and more things that were formerly done in hardware are moved to software, and more and more things are given interfaces that we can program new things for.
In short, no need to panic. This article is what used to be called "yellow journalism," trying to stir up discontent and political action where there is little evidence or story in fact.
Literacy rates and Infant mortality aren't any higher here then any other first world nation. If we have a lot of people 'below' the 'poverty line' it's only because our standards are so high that people who would be well off in other places in the world are considered poor.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The Invisible Hand is bullsh*t. The war costs for the last war haven't been absorbed yet. I believe that a big part of what's keeping the economy down is the fact that we collectively owe about SIX TRILLION dollars (very roughly $20k a piece). Interest on that amount means that we can't afford to maintain/improve our infrastructure (...support the general welfare).
Until our children are no longer molded into castrated sheep democracy remains a fake and a danger. -A. S. Neill
OK, let's say that my figures are OK for the 70's, and you have the current figures correct.
Now, take your figures, and divide by two. You haven't addressed the fact that the current, roughly equivalent standard of living now requires two salaries, not one.
I'd say that things have regressed, no?
It is always wise to take the "all the jobs are leaving stories" with a grain (or 2 ) of salt.
Jobs leave for many reasons.
Wage rates are one. But consider; if wages are all
then Bangledesh would be a booming country.
What kind of jobs are leaving? low paid ones, high
paid one? How much education is required, transportation of the output, tax stucture...
Does the arguement "lets keep all the low paying jobs here " sound like a good thing?
I for one would like to keep the high paying jobs here. Reality howver; dictates a mix,
and this is where support of education comes in.
Better supported education , with a better
educated work force mean a higher paid work force,
in general.
end of rant.
It's called Mercantilism. Leave it to Bush II to gamble the whole US economy on centuries old discredited economic theories...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
So what if he sells missle secrets to interns and humps China (or was it the other way around?). Better to be nuked with a job than nuked without. At least we can die with a paycheck in our pockets.
Better yet, where the hell is Ross Perot when you need him?
Table-ized A.I.
You wanted Bush and his far-right policy of "everything for the rich"
The donkeys also like Open Borders because immagrants (or wannabe imm's) tend to vote left.
Techies have been fucked from both sides.
Table-ized A.I.
Well, I have to look at it from the other perspective. I have founded, work for, and have other people work for, a small internet software company in Germany.
We've been in business for over two years now and we are going stronger each quarter, but none of us get payed even remotely well. Because we don't earn serious money, our company can survive and stay competetive and we all can keep our jobs.
Every once in a while our team grows when a new guy enters. We tell everyone up front that they aren't going to make much money, are expected to put in extra time, and need to take their work seriously. Not a single new guy said "screw this, I'd rather get social benefits from the government because *they* pay more money for me doing nothing than *you* pay me for working my ass off". No one said that. People like to have a job where they can make a difference, a job where they can show their potential not only to their employer but also for themselves.
For them, it's important to be important. And while we, of course, complain about money, we know there are more important things than having a sports car and stock options.
Of course, we also hope that we'll do much better once the market picks up speed again. But in the mean time the whole point is being actually still in business when the time comes.
To attract cheaper IT professionals into America :-)
Since businesses get many tax benefits that individuals don't get
That's if they pay any taxes at all. Some even get refunds.
Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. In fact, Microsoft actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits.
General Electric, America's most profitable corporation, reported $50.8 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, but paid only 11.5 percent of that in federal income taxes. That low tax rate reflected almost $12 billion in corporate tax welfare for GE.
Ford enjoyed $9.1 billion in corporate tax welfare over the past five years. It reported $18.6 billion in U.S. profits over the past two years, but paid a tax rate of only 5.7 percent.
Worldcom paid no taxes at all in two of the last three years, despite reported U.S. profits of $15.2 billion. Worldcom's total tax rate over the three years was only 1.6%. Corporate tax welfare slashed Worldcom's tax bill by $5.3 billion over the past five years.
IBM reported $5.7 billion in U.S. profits in 2000, but paid only 3.4 percent of that in federal income taxes. In 1997, IBM reported $3.1 billion in U.S. profits, and instead of paying taxes, got an outright tax rebate. Over the past five years, IBM enjoyed a total of $4.7 billion in corporate tax welfare.
General Motors paid no taxes at all in three of the last five years, despite $12.5 billion in reported U.S. profits. GM's tax rate for the past three years was negative 1.3 percent. Its corporate tax welfare totaled $3.6 billion over the past five years.
Enron paid no income taxes at all in four of the past five years, despite $1.8 billion in reported U.S. profits. Enron's total taxes over the five years were a negative $381 million. Its corporate tax welfare totaled $1.0 billion.
El Paso Energy reported $1.6 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, but paid less than nothing in federal income taxes, getting tax rebates of $254 million. El Paso's tax rate over the five years was negative 15.5 percent. Its corporate welfare totaled $827 million.
Colgate-Palmolive paid no taxes at all in three of the past five years, despite $1.6 billion in reported U.S. profits. Colgate's total tax rate over the five years was negative 1.3 percent, due to $595 million in corporate tax welfare.
Navistar, on $1.4 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, paid only $28 million in federal income taxes, a tax rate of only 2 percent. Navistar's corporate tax welfare totaled $451 million.
Source: Corporate annual reports and forms 10-K.
Citizens for Tax Justice
You're funny! I have two words for you the chew on regarding your "left's politically correct censorship" theory
If that's not enough for you, how about "first amendment zones"?
If THAT's not enough for you, how about being told if we don't agree with Mr. Bush we'd best kindly drink a nice tall glass of shut the fuck up? We're at WAR, ya know! Can't be questioning the POTUS while at war (or any other time, apparantly, unless he happens to be a commie pinko Democrat)
If those few things listed above alone don't bother you, you haven't been paying attention.
Yes folks, I have realized, as an american citizen I stand NO chance of getting a tech job right now. So I put my plan into action.
/end satire
I'll renounce my american citizenship, fly to india, marry a native woman (to gain indian citizenship) and change my last name to Apu. Then, and only then will I apply for an american job under H1B visa laws. AND I'LL GET THE JOB WOOHOO!!! Oh and let's not forget, I'll need to bring 8k with me for that phony CS degree.
Boy will my bosses be surprised when they see toqer Apu is really a white dude that speaks perfect english! They might even sponsor me to become an american citizen again!
I'm from europe, not the U.S. But it's basically the same here.
... but shouldn't the western world - with the power it still has - promote the complete abolishment of copyright, patents etc.?
I'm wondering where free software/open source fits into this discussion.
At the moment, the IT world creates these "imaginary good" software and sells it through worldwide copyright agreements (WIPO etc.) to the western people and the 2nd/3rd world. So...
I may sound very silly here...
- I'm not afraid of is the destruction of the software industry by that. If there is a demand for software, someone will write it. Maybe he will hide the source, but in the long term, this behaviour will lose.
- this would be true globalization, everyone gets the same access to software
There is one big important assumption here: That the work of today will completely change into "brain work". But isn't that a thing the IT industry promotes and the people working there have as their self-perception?
Just my 2c.
Yes, that is an offshoot of number 1.
The only reason that we can't lower our wages to match foreign labor is the cost of living. I wonder what it would be like if all prices and wages were rolled back or reduced by a percentage?
I wouldn't mind working for $400.00 per month if my house payment was under $100.00 and the cost of everything else was reduced correspondingly.
It would also make the people with lots of money in the bank very happy as they would become a lot wealthier and maybe the people with modest retirement savings would be able to live out their days in comfort.
Just a though...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
or you could blame Al Gore for running a weak-ass campaign and for trying only to appeal to voters who were gonna vote for Bush.
You don't say what you do, but the way I see it, one of two things must be happening.
A lot of the bitching and moaning I've seen -- though certainly not all -- comes from those who were happy to ride the web wave a few years ago. Those in this article, and the people affected by the type of ads on the cited f*ckthisjob.com site, are no exception. These are the idiots who gave up higher education to make their "easy" million, and did stupid things like the guy in the article who bought a house way beyond his means and then got screwed (as his accountant had always told him he would) when tax returns came around. These are the people who thought reading a quickie HTML book made them qualified.
The rest of the world always knew better. Anyone who stopped and thought about it could see that a market full of such people was never going to last long. Anyone who stopped and thought about it would have either planned for this while times were good, or simply pursued a more viable long-term plan in the first place. Of course, most people in this situation don't think much, which is why they're all unemployed and bitching and moaning now.
On the flip side, there are those who have genuinely worked hard to develop skills and experience, who are unfortunate enough to be caught in the storm because for whatever reason their previous job is no longer there. For those who've been in the industry for a while, savings from when times were better help to see them through until the industry gets moving again after its little cleansing exercise, and their real skills are once more in demand.
There's not a lot you can say to comfort the unfortunate people who just got in at the wrong time, right as the bubble burst, and who have no savings from those earlier good times. Clearly times are hard, and they certainly won't get the starting salaries within the first few years that they might have hoped for as they went through college in the late '90s. But just as surely as night follows day, times will improve again, and real skills will come to have value again.
All you can do in that position is struggle through -- maybe even working in a related industry, or just flipping burgers and stacking shelves for a few months to pay the rent -- but know that if your skills are real, the demand will return. These same people are also likely to be the ones who adapt better to whatever slightly different set of skills might be most useful as the market recovers, and who are prepared to read a good book and play around now and then to keep their skills as current as possible, at the same time as working wherever to pay the rent. Times are hard now, but for these people, they will improve. All you can do is keep the faith until then, or get out of the industry and retrain.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"The US, and countries that wish they were (i.e. western Europe)".
I'm quite happy to stay British, thankyouverymuch.
They say that because if there were a direct election, the interests of highly concentrated areas would get even *more* over-representation. If South Dakota has 2 electoral votes, that's better than .02%.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
...how well capitalism is working for Russia now.
Boy, clearly capitalism is evil too.
Or perhaps citing two states that sort of call themselves socialist but which didn't actually do the socialism thing very well, and which had all sorts of other problems including dictators and elites who ruled with iron fists, is just shorthand for saying 'capitalism is my god'.
Which is fine to say, but isn't a useful argument, in my opinion.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
F*&K any company pushing it's work off-shore to sell products to US citizens... Hell i know those people deserve jobs just as much as we do, but when you really get down to it, the companies are screwing us BOTH over... they pay off shore workers a fifth of our wages, and sell it back to us at a 4x markup. Seriously, work that involves using your brain shouldnt be valued at the same value as collecting garbage or pushing paper... or doing grunt work in general... The hours programmers put in now-adays to finish projects is discusting and worthy of far more compensation.
I agree there was a time when certain skillsets were over-valued... including my own... But these jobs ARENT that cheap. Now i can make more money doing stupid shit...
Meanwhile weve got morons in goverment fighting over oil supplies that'll be gone in 20 years while our economy takes a big shit on us all.
It's time for us to return to high tariffs on off-shore compition used to undermine american workers, time to NOT have undercutting agreements such as NAFTA (imagine if mexico had a tech sector, wed really be screwed), and it's time to build, buy, and use American products.
This country hasn't been remotly close to self-sufficient for quite some time.... maybe we all oughta take a look at trying to get closer to that. Our dependancies on the rest of the world are killing us, hampering our livelihoods, and setting us up for wars we shouldn't be involved in.
i know it sounds extremist, but weve had our hands so deeply in world affairs and trading out our own wealth of labor for cheap off-shore labor that intrests in foriegn politics (that are really just the intrests of cost cutting corps) are dictating the actions of our goverment, pissing off cultures that shouldnt be involved with us, and causing a general mess all over.
Thats my rant for now.
on a side note, I do believe that american entrepeneurism is what really fuels our economy, and it wont be too long before the next big thing comes along that is american made/only, and we'll sell it well until some other country learns to copy it for less. Looking at japan, they used to be the guys copying our shit and selling it for less, until they became almost as "first world" and high wage as us.... And although india has a billion people if they get enough high tech and skilled labor going on... they too will be too advanced to be cheaper than other countries (which the article mentions), where then? Africa?
-- enter the sig --
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
No, you need to look at manufacturing outlook as a percentage of the GDP and on it's own. It's been contracting for 30 years. Some of it was due to improvements abroad, the rest is due to foreign state subsidies.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
THIS IS CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY?
And just how do domestic makers expect US consumers to purchase domestic goods when they no longer have the disposable income because their jobs went overseas?
The US Corporations can STUFF IT.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I think the concept of "Third World" is a bit outdated, and can now be inferred to mean what they say the last paragraph of the link:
The concept of the "third world" still rings true as there are many nations with high infant mortality, high rates of poverty, and dependence on industrialized nations.
Comparing it to the USSR (as 2nd world) really makes no sense any longer, since they ... don't exist :-)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
For christs sake! Are people JUST NOW figuring this shit out??
Hell, jobs have been leaving this country since I was a kid in the 60's. I remember Japanese crap was just that, crap and Chinese imports were limited to china (plates, cups) and bamboo/paper toys. It was novelty crap for kids to blow spare pennies on. Then the Japs got serious on cars and that's when it all started. Then Nixon f*cked us over by making nice with China and they began to gear up to flood us with more trash.
I remember in 1979 I had just moved out on my own and gotten a good paying job. I wanted to buy a TV but I was pissed because EVERYTHING said "Made in Chicago"
I shopped and shopped and I finally found a 25" Curtis Mathis console TV that said in BIG letters on the back, "Made in Texas" so I bought it! I was so happy to have found something made in Texas and NOT in Chicago that I had to have it. And I paid $1,200 in 1979 dollars for it, no remote control and with rotory knobs no less!
It's too late folks. This country is gone. We build NOTHING here anymore.
What do we produce? More consumers for cheaply made, imported CRAP!
That would be called Generation X and Y.
Agreed:
Just a small two point note:
1] USA Taxpayers and it's citizen's support and protect these large corporate business intrests throughout the world, with our blood and dollars.
2] If people do not make a good living wage in THIS country; then who buys the $100 pair of sneakers. Not the people in the countries where the jobs are outsourced. They are too smart to waste their new-found (relativly speaking) fortune on the junk we buy here in the US. They will spend it on helping their kids get a better life and saving.
"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it" Richard Feynman
i live in Sri Lanka and work for the webdev section of a british dotcom. at the moment the company has 20 webdev people in the UK and 4 in SL (the rest of the team are support staff and grafx ppls), but according to the ceo they are thinking of downgrading the entire uk structure and hiring more people here in SL.
my point is here... by UK standards they are paying us peanuts!! i get paid less than 7% of what the job i do would cost if it were being done by a brit. (trust me, i checked the numbers, a dev guy would get UKP2,000 there i get the equivalent of UKP150)
but this amount lets me make about 10x of minimum wage here which is a decent amount.
but there are downsides to this.
- MOST ASIANS ARE DRONES!!! if you want them to do a piece of work and keep doing it they are perfect. but our society and education system which puts more weight on conformity and herd-following (and no i DO NOT mean chasing a bunch of cows around 8-) ) means that if you want to do something innovative here you got to find those exceptional types who can think and improvise. and those ones are already in the US on their H1B
- most people in asia don't speak english all that well. this leads to confusion and problems in communications with the westerners
i was hired because i am one of those few nonconformists who decided to come back to my country (went to uni in OKC, USA, saw the dot bomb about to drop and buggered off, also my parents run a moderately successful company here), i can think on my feet and i am am bilingual (i speak both languages well enough to pass for a native, in fact when i was in the US i frequently was)..i see my friends trying to make a living in the US and i feel sorry for them (degree holding CS guys stacking shelves in wally world...) personally i would love to get them down here where the cost of living is low, and if you know how to manipulate the system (which, believe me i do) you can live and work. sure you'll miss your mega malls, and seeing the latest movies as they come out, no mtn dew, no game arcades and no DSL.. but we got great weather, cheap housing (by us standards anyway) and beaches...
personally i would LOVE to have a few slashdotters come join me here, and i am already running a dotcom that could use some help (so its not making money atm but i'm working on that part)
i guess the point i am trying to make is this. the US has been training its people for freedom and creativity, the east for drones. put the two together and you get a potent mix. we could use some creative thinkers here, you could do with some drones there.
anyone wanna come mix it up??
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
For a UNIX geek, you sound suspiciously like an overpaid CEO, CFO, or other such low life. I look forward to when these jobs are exported as well. Nobody is worth millions of dollars a year, regardless of what they do.
There are plenty of people in Afganistan; I'm sure many are qualified to do your job at a mere fraction of what you're being paid. What, you were laid off?!
Instead of raising the worlds standard of living, US companies seem to be focused on lowering the US standard of living.
"Can't afford to live on the mere pittance we're offering? Then die or move to Somalia!"
Thanks NAFTA and WTO.
Heisenberg may have been here.
"In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery."
Um... what? Says who? Sources? Links to related journals? Those numbers you conveniently don't provide?
"I won't provide statistics, but check out (a) Literacy rates (b) Infant mortality (c) Homicide rates (d) % of population below the poverty line, and (e) the gap between the rich and poor."
And I suppose this has absolutely nothing to do with the way we accept more immigrants than any other country in the world hands down? I don't know about you, but I would tend to expect a few Third World tendancies when we're busily accepting people from said Third World.
Of course, I'm sure our numbers would be "better" if we simply took a "Not just no but Hell No!" approach to immigration, much like they seem to do in the EU. I suppose Third World problems are best dealt with at arm's length. Where's Joerg Haider when you need him?
Those "literacy rates..." Are they a count of literacy in general or just literacy in English?
"A large middle class running in hamster wheels does not a First World country make."
How about an economic environment that fosters self-entrepenuership, allowing just about anybody to hang their own shingle? How about a political environment that has virtually no distinctions between "citizenship by choice" and "citizenship by blood?" How about a social environment that prizes hard work and self determination above all else?
"And in pure opinion, I believe it has less to do with Democratic myopism and more to do with some extremely rich people pulling the ladder up after themselves."
You mean like "limiting the numbers and sources of immigrants that can come into the US?" You mean like "unions that both require membership to work and deny membership to non-citizens?"
The flip side is "Why would anybody start a corporation (or any kind of business) when the government seeks to put so many burdens on operating a business?"
...is that you can ALMOST sound like you know what you're talking about, so people will believe you.
Look at the reason trade unions first sprang up. Rampant abuse by employers.
If the longshoreman's union is saying what you think it is, it is because at core all CEOs believe that their best employee is one who is a slave. If they are slaves they can be paid just enough to keep them alive, they have no option to go elsewhere, and you can abuse them however you like. So when a union says that you actually have to pay your workers and treat them like human beings, CEOs are naturally aghast and go off to find somewhere where they can keep slaves in peace.
The union and the company take adversarial roles. What eventually comes about is supposed to be something in between what the union wants (a zillion dollars a year for all employees, no work, etc) and something that the CEO wants. (A slave.) Take away the unions, and, as in the so-called 'right to starve' (er, work) states, you get slaves.
Which is what makes capitalism great. All those peope laboring away, for the benefit of one percent of the population.
>> Maybe you like the idea of living in a world where a few owners of capital pay the rest of us just barely enough to
>> justify going to work, but I don't."
>You get that under socialism, not capitalism.
You are ill-informed. The nordic states have a MUCH higher standard of living, much better health care (unless you happen to be really rich), and a much smaller income gap between the rich and the poor. They're much, much more socialist than the US is.
In the US, we have the RIGHT to be miserable. Well, except for the rich.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
It is just like making murder and rape illegal. The happen still, but happen much less.
Abortion laws punish those who are willing to perform abortions, not so much those who get them. If abortion were illegal and I was a pregnant teenager, I wouldn't hesitate to seek an abortion because of questions of legality but rather because of questions of safety. Where abortion is illegal the penalty for seeking one is the risk of accidental death - not what I would call justice. Furthermore, the effect of making something illegal is to make fewer people willing to do it, which is effective in preventing murder and rape. In the case of abortion, though, those willing to do it illegally simply get more business when it's made illegal.
Meanwhile, the average executive of United received a pay increase of 8% over that year.
Okay, you're welcome to hate unions, although frankly I fully believe that the 'experience' you refer to that you have with unions was either a) lots of wonderful secondhand stories from people indoctrinated by Ronald Reagan or b) firmly from the side of the management.
But MY secondhand experience was with a shop that hired an extremely expensive company to come in and destroy their bid for union membership (illegally) in infancy. The workers over the next four years received pay cut after pay cut, and the executive salaries went up. This was during a recession, so they couldn't get other jobs, and the second time around everyone who even started to talk about a union was summarily fired.
And you know what? The anti-union corps did their job so well at that company that even after the entire work force was thoroughly abused, lives were destroyed, and the executives raked in more and more salaries, several of my uncle's friends are still actively union-hostile. They're just dead-certain that things would have been much worse with the union in there.
One of the demands that didn't get a lot of airtime with the United negotiations was that the executives take the same pay cut and raise limitations and so forth that the unionized workers got. If they'd done that, the votes would have gone very differently. But they were MUCH more interested in keeping their money than they were in resolving the dispute.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Levittown was the first significant example of the tract home community. It was also the first example of mass production of housing in this country. The town was designed to provide housing for the hugh number of men returning from WW II. The size of Levittown homes were typical for new construction in the 50s.
You need a new party, then, because this one seems to have permanently jumped the shark. Whatever's going on now with the Bush administration, and with the War on Terror/War on Drugs is probably not a temporary phenomenon. If more Republicans translated their misgivings into outright approbation rather than irritable tolerance, perhaps things would change.
I believe in states rights, and even local rights, having the power to decide such things. The traditional republicans would as well. Abortions could be illegal in San Fransisco or New Haven, but not legal in Tyler, TX.
Tell it to the Republican party, which today pushed through a Federal ban on late-term abortions. Everybody has a different opinion on this issue, but the one unifying element of Republican dogma (I thought) was that abortion is a State interest, not an issue of Interstate Commerce. Again, this is more than just a temporary issue relating to the current administration; it's endemic to the modern Republican party.
If it is in the best interests of the Nation to get Washington out of the business sector (or just limit it as much as possible without allowing monopolies), I will vote for that, even if it isn't in my best interests.
I agree. If that's the case. And it hasn't been demonstrated to be so.
I don't see the connection as being absolute, but I do believe that if a certain community wants more tax dollars to go to education, they're entitled to it. I don't believe that a blanket program would serve the entire country. Diving decisions up into local and state matters tends to get more decisive outcomes, and can allow everyone to be more happy.
Education should be a priority that should be provided equally to a broad range of people regardless of their individual (or local community) wealth; without the guarantee of equality in education, there can be no promise of equality in future wealth. This results in a permanent underclass, and that is antithetical to the ideals of American democracy.
Now, while I personally don't think the Federal gov't need fund education, I do think it should be more than a local (town/county) issue decision. The ugly fact of the matter is that county and town-funded education falls down badly in poorer jurisdictions, and our entire nation suffers for it.
The one exception I would make in the Federal/State debate is to provide a Federal standard for teaching certifications. There's no reason that a teacher educated and certified in Oregon should be limited to teaching in Oregon by arcane and redundant requirements. A single, substantial standard for certification would create a nation-wide job market for teachers, and thereby make the profession enormously more attractive to would-be teachers. The best thing about this is that it significantly increase the desirability of a teaching post, without requiring the gov't to fund salary increases.
But back to the Republicans, I respect what you think about the issue, but the fact remains that the real Republican party is happy to collect enormous quantities of Federal tax, which it then redistributes back to local education in enormously stupid ways. If it's politically impossible to convince D.C. to give these funds back, then we should at least spend them intelligently (No Child Left Behind, my ass.)
Money that would be going to kids is not going to corporations, it simply wouldn't go into the economy (since the corporations are the backbone). We need them, like it or not, for jobs, goods, services, etc.
Actually, corporations are the least of the problem. At least they do produce tangible revenue that (normally) benefits the public, and a corporate tax cut can be linked to some sort of desirable type of investment/spending. The issue I would take with the current policy is that tax cuts are being frittered a
If Clinton's "positive" image helped so much, why did the economy start to slide the spring of 2000? Before we even knew who would have the office?
That being said, I think the jobs that dried up during these recession years are not coming back to these shores...I should have taken on a career that had some sort, any sort, of protection. IT is dead end. There is no way I'm going to make it to retirement in this field - and I'm no dummy. I can't even begin to tell you how much experience in all the buzzwords that I have. I've done the whole gamut, too: requirements gathering, design, DB design, all the way through to maintenance. It won't matter much to corps looking to follow the Nike model (cut labor costs by using next to no American labor; continue to sell at exorbitant prices to Americans). Well, it can't last forever. If there are no more middle class folks, there will be NO ONE to buy the products. I'm Libertarian, but I've never been a fan of globalism as it's being carried out here. American policies have to be there to protect AMERICANS - I don't give a rip about others - if we can help them, that's nice, but that comes secondary to Americans' interests. And policies cannot be set up just to protect CEO interests. I say if companies hire more than a certain percentage of their staff offshore, then the CEO/COO/VPs, etc., need to live in that country, too.
I hate to be so negative, but it's rough out there, and it's only going to get rougher. As people have pointed out, it's a race to the bottom. Corps want wage slaves and automatons, not uppity individuals with any sort of opinion. It doesn't matter how much "value" you can try to angle for, you'll still be out the door the minute they can snap up an h1b to do your job for 1/2 your wages, or better yet, send it to some third world country like India for 1/10 your wages.
Wouldn't that be where the program runs in a main (infinite) loop that watches for events from outside the main thread (whether from an i/o device, another thread, or whatever) and processes them, does whatever is necessary, and then returns to the main loop?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Let me see...
Are you seriously saying that if this fellow makes $50k/year, and you calculate out $26,280, that he should have $23,720 left over?
Do you just not pay taxes or something?
(Yes, yes, there are plenty of other places that you're being unrealistic and irrational, but that's definitely the lowest-hanging fruit.)
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
But he had dire words for U.S.-based programmers. 'Right now, we're probably the last generation of North American-based coders. Everything that can be done is being done in other places,' he [Jeff Suttor, staff engineer for Web technologies and standards in the Java Web services group at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems] said."
- Web Standards Burnout Decried
So, is the existance of the Internet, which makes it easy to connect people world-wide, ultimately going to be the curse of most software professionals in the 'developed' world, when much lower salaried (and just as experienced) developers in other countries can easily undercut them for such services? Was the tech boom centered in Silicon Valley just an initial flameout with nothing but a few glowing embers scattered about?
... is no matter how bad their economy gets, all someone has to do is start chanting "USA! USA!" and they completley forget all their problems.
Although from time to time when that doesn't work you may have to start a war.
----- sXe
> This overlooks the fact that the rich are a minority of those who benefit from the Bush tax cut.
This is absolutely true. Also completely, totally, nauseatingly misleading. The rich are only 5% of the country, according to Bush's definition. 1/3 of Americans benefit from his tax cut. Never mind that those who are in the lowest 20% of the income levels don't benefit at all, and that basically NOBODY with an income of less than the top 10% gains more than $300 per year. But the top 1% gains more by percentage of income and (astonishingly) by total amount of money than EVERYONE ELSE COMBINED.
We are at historically low tax levels for the super-rich. At the times when our country had the highest tax levels for these people, we were most productive AND most prosperous. All the figures are easy to find, and I encourage you to go look them up for yourself. A good place to start is your local library, because then you don't get numbers deliberately slanted by the left OR the right.
But you won't. Because you'd much rather not crawl out of your own preconceptions when it's so much more comfortable to live and die without opening your mind.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Apple Cert, or BA in Classical Latin ? would you like fries with that?
+1 fashionably cynical
The real answer is promote yourself and stop being a worker-bee. Join the management team and keep your job!
Seriously, if you recognize the simple rules of supply and demand and how they affect the labor market and, furthermore, you see that protesting in front of the IMF and the World Bank is not going to stop the tide of globalization, then take action! Don't sit on the sidelines as the world acts upon you. Find a service -- service is key -- that US businesses are willing to pay for and setup shop in India or Sri Lanka! You handle business development and front as the CxO here in the US, and get one reliable person in your third-world location to oversee your own worker-bees. Know how to use PowerPoint?! You've got the skills to do this. All of the Dell, AOL, HP, etc. call centers in the third world are run by small business people who started just like this.
If any of you have co-workers or friends with family in the third world, ask them about contacts back home that you could pursue. I promise you that no matter how many times you post on Slashdot about how furious these trends make you, you're not going to stop it. Best you can do is recognize the trend and make the best of it.
P.S. I'm was laid off last winter because my employer was hit with an FTC lawsuit for telemarketing fraud. If any of you have contacts in the third world, please e-mail me. I'm interested in creating jobs and providing rich opportunities for people you know!
I'm really amazed at the number of people on all sides of the political spectrum who can't figure out what's going on around them. Foriegn outsourcing is not about corporate survival except in companies with a historic record of mismanagement. Let's say you're making millions of units of almost any mass market item a year. The difference between the cost of doing R&D here and in India spread over X-million units is fairly trivial. A recent article quotes a CEO as saying that he expects a problem with Indian competition 10 years from now, but this is saving him money now... what's implied is that 10 years from now will be someone else's problem.
This is about notching up earnings in a down economy so CEOs can make the profit targets which will enable their next batch of stock options. It's the same sort of thing that has produced Enron-style shell games to inflate reported profits.
Like just about everything else that's been going on in the last few years at the large corporate level, it's about short-term maximation of profits. Not for the stockholders, for the CEOs themselves. The stockholders aren't going to know when to dump their stock to get maximum value for it. The CEOs don't have the slightest interest in their employeess, the health of the nation or the communities in which they're doing business, profit for the stockholders or building good companies anymore. "The commons" is just something to privatise a chunk of and strip-mine that chunk until it's worthless.
This is hardly surprising. When one's main form of compensation is based on meeting quarterly profit or stock price targets, one doesn't want to invest in long-term R&D or employees or anything that might conceivably interfere with making the next batch of stock options kick in. Doing anything interesting and creative that doesn't show an immediate return is the sort of thing that makes investment analysts who generally don't understand what the companies that they advise about do real unhappy. Make them unhappy and the stock price drops. The stock one previously got in compensation drops in value... along with the CEO's personal net worth.
Why hasn't private industry built a space infrastructure capable of supporting things like a powersat network supplying enough energy to make Middle East oil permanently obsolete? In general, the present corporate business model can't support major projects that would take 10 years to provide a return on investment. A typical Fortune 500 CEO isn't going to start a project that's going to do nothing for him but make a successor look real good.
The funniest part about this is that the CEOs doing this appear to be under the impression that India is just another bunch of burbs whose residents talk funny, have an interesting ethnic cuisine and work real cheap.
[Note 1] They are normally on the edge of nuclear war with their Muslim neighbor, Pakistan, mainly over religious hostility. The dominant religious grouping (Hindus) is calling for the expulsion of Muslims. Poor Muslims are being physically pushed into Bangladesh.
Message: 10
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:08:10 -0500 (EST)
From: "IntellNet"
Subject: News Flash: Ten killed as bomb rips rail coach in Bombay
Ten people were killed and 75 hurt yesterday when a bomb blew up on a train packed with homebound commuters in Bombay, the deadliest in a spate of blasts in India's financial capital in recent months.
Note 1 - to read this kind of happy fun news yourself, subscribe to OSINT-L, the Open Sources Intelligence mailing list.
What I describe is business as usual.
Third World generally translates as "powder keg".
However, the CEOs who are doing this know that if they lose their bet and one of their call centers disappears in a conve
Tech Public Policy stuff
Ok, this may be a stupid question, but has anybody thought of what happens to the whole "outsource to India" trend when India dukes it out with Pakistan again? Doesn't this scare companies away from making such a significant investment there?
>I wasn't posting for your amusement.
Well, I sure hope this post WAS for my amusement, because otherwise it sure had some serious unintended consequences.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
you mean that labor is the greatest of the three inputs to business?
... hi bingo
I must be working in the wrong sector.. I've never seen a job move overseas. I'm a web programmer. Perhaps it's only tech support centers moving? Or people working for huge multi-national companies? There are plenty of smaller companies looking for people.
My company won't even let me work from home.. they want me in the office because I deal with people from other depts often. I can't imagine they'll ever move my job overseas because my dept is too interconnected to just be surgically removed and placed somewhere else.
Well, the CEO does not we you a thing, he is doing his work and that's it, they pay him to do that. Now, the company can't owe you anything as it's an abstract entity. Ok, the shareholders then? Well, the shareholders are normal people, so they don't have the tax benefits, etc.
But not all is lost, in the US you have credit, so use it, start your own comapny, take a risk.
unfinished: (adj.)
In some segments of the socio- and anthropological fields this is accepted. Note that some segments of the socio- and anthropological fields are also noted for "not being real science."
To take literacy rates as an example, third-world countries are characterized by literacy rates in the neighborhood of 50-70%, with rates for women being significantly lower than those for men. The average literacy rate for Africa is around 50%, with that for Arab and Asian countries being around 45% (source: UNESCO). Even "advanced" and "educated" third-world countries tend to have literacy rates around 70-85% (Libya, China, Kenya, etc.). The United States, by countrast, has a literacy rate of 97% (source for the past two sentences is the CIA World Factbook, and corroborated by a random perusal of some Google search results). This is firmly within the "first-world" range, which ranges from Greece and Israel at 95% to Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway at 100%.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The literacy rates I quoted for Africa, Arab countries, and Asia are for women's literacy (as clicking on the source link would indicate). The corresponding overall population figures are around 10-15% higher (but still well below 70%).
I'd also point out that large disparities between male and female literacy rates are another sign of third-world status.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This isn't really the case; European governments are much more stingy about immigration and naturalization than the U.S. For example, many second-generation Turkish immigrants in Germany who were born in Germany do not have German citizenship. Why? Because they're not ethnically German. As another example, my dad, an American, who married a Greek woman, tried to get a work permit in Greece. He was denied. Why? Because he's not ethnically Greek (if it was an American woman marrying a Greek man, on the other hand, that'd be okay -- the man's the head of the household in the Old World, after all).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I Live in Switzerland, that fabled land in Europe of greedy Banks, snowy alpine chocolate box covers and strange, overpiced cheese with holes in it. Switzerland is one of the richest countries on earth. But in the last year and a half there has been one economic desaster after another. The national airline, Swissair, a national symbol for something like 75 years went tits up at the end of 2001, after a desasterous spending spree in which they bought out about five other regional airlines in Europe which all went bankrupt. In this year alone, the big Swiss banks and insuances have started letting workers go in their thousands, something that has never happened here before and something that is especially troubling when one considers that Switzerland's main empoyers are those very banks and insurances.
I work for a small building supplies company that is also going through rocky times as a system administrator and general computer do it all. Life is damn hard and I earn very little. I am constantly worried that I will lose my job to the other IT guy who doesn't even know what a path in Windows is (C:\bla\bla etc) but is doing a course in software engineering in C++. The guy is absolutely useless in sys admin stuff (and is less than interested) but is the bosses darling because he does the company's website, and the boss is one of those people who get impressed by Flash intros. He's an Arab and can not put a simple written sentence in German together.
However, if there's one thing I have learned in this long and painful life, it's that life is not fair. Shit happens and one invariably gets shafted sometime or another.
I suppose that is why we have religion and why Osama and company are so trendy in the muslim world.
But not all is lost, in the US you have credit, so use it, start your own comapny, take a risk.
Spoken like a true Republican: Spend borrowed money.
And this hypothetical business would do what? Manufacture goods to be sold to unemployed U.S. workers who lost their jobs to foreign outsourcing? Every U.S. job from the kid working at McDonald's to the guy producing Cadillacs is at risk when there is massive unemployment and little discretionary income.
In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery. I won't provide statistics...
I will. For one statistic at least. Take a look at the figures in this 1995 Government of Canada Study on homicide and firearms homicide by nation.
We have Firearms Homicide rates / 100,000 pop of
Japan: 0.06
Britain: 0.14
United States: 6.4
A 107 time higher chance of dying to a gun is a good reason, if you're a Japanese citizen, to abstain from moving to the United States, I should think.
When they run out of poor Indian they will have to raise salaries, right? That's the point...we need to eradicate extreme poverty, and letting these contries get some jobs is a good thing. The problem to solve is that people in America must learn new jobs that people in poorer countries can't...
unfinished: (adj.)
For example, do something the rich need. For example, find the cure to some strange cancer, and you will see the money coming in. Or things like that. If the people that own 80% of the wealth do not spend or invest their money then of course you'll have a hard time trying to make a business. Or find way to be more productive than Indians, or maybe more efficient, or maybe better trained, or maybe trained in different arts the indians cannot master.
You need to differentiate from the other 4800 million guys living on Earth. Or do you thing the world economy will pay more for your works just because you where born in America? They will not! Capitalism doesn't give a damn about people. If I have to choose between a Japanise car or an American one, I'd opt for the cheapest. If Fords are more expensive then bad luck for you, I won't buy it (and sooner or later, americans will have to get fired)!
unfinished: (adj.)
For example, do something the rich need.
What a beautiful world. 99.99% of the U.S. population slaving away in dead-end jobs to make shiny things for rich people.
For example, find the cure to some strange cancer, and you will see the money coming in.
That's a practical suggestion. Why didn't I cure cancer last week instead of wasting my time on the computer? What a dolt I was.
If the people that own 80% of the wealth do not spend or invest their money then of course you'll have a hard time trying to make a business.
Spend: The wealthiest people save. They don't spend. The middle-class and lower spend. They are the ones that put the vast majority of their paychecks back into the U.S. economy. A rich person still only eats three meals a day, drives one car at a time, and only has two feet on which to put shoes. He's not going to buy 300 cars, 650 meals per day, or 75,000 pairs of shoes. Sure, his car, meals, and shoes will cost more, but one pair of shoes, no matter how expensive, isn't going to do much for employment.
Invest: If a rich person invests in Dell and Dell funnels that investment money into outsourced foreign labor, how much does that help the U.S. economy? If a rich person buys government bonds and the rest of us pay the rich person interest on those bonds (through our federal taxes), how does that help the economy?
Or do you thing the world economy will pay more for your works just because you where born in America?
I don't want to sell my services to the world. I want to sell them to the U.S. -- you know, the rich people you say that I should target.
Capitalism doesn't give a damn about people.
That's why we need legislation that does. Capitalism, unchecked, leads to monopolies, worker abuse, low wages, and ever-growing chasms between the have and the have-nots.
If I have to choose between a Japanise car or an American one, I'd opt for the cheapest.
So, in the U.S., we can put import tariffs on the Japanese cars and, magically, the prices are much more competitive. Now the choice is between the cheaper Ford and the more expensive Toyota.
Want proof that this works? In April of 1983, motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson was able to convince U.S. lawmakers that Japanese bikes were unfair competition for American bikes. As a result, a tariff of 45% was levied against all imported Japanese motorcycles with a displacement of over 700cc. Some of the Japanese manufacturers got around this by assembling their larger models in this country, opening up plants and employing U.S. workers. The end result was that Harley Davidson was able to remain in business, thrive, and continue to assemble motorcycles in the U.S. The same thing has happened in the auto industry, with tariffs causing many Japanese auto manufacturers to open plants in the U.S.
How soon will job-exporting western companies realise that they are laying off their customer's customers?
Think about it.
T&K.
Political language
Software does want to be free - and the same things that make it freedom loving - it's "lightness" and it's easy reuse mean that the cost of producing it will fall too.
A corner store hires a manager to increase income. THere are 3 other corner stores on the other 3 corners. But out corner store makes the most money because it was the first corner store on that corner and therefore it has the most money, and it has used that money to improve its infrastructure, which along with the goodwill that comes from being the first corner store there, gives it a competitive advantage. Now, however, using funds from the the manager decides to funnel customers to one of the other corner stores. What does the owner of the first corner store do? Does he say, "Oh, thanks for raising the standard of living of my competitor"? No, he sues and possibly files charges against the manager. Not to point too fine a point on it, the "manager" is our elected and appointed leaders here in AMerica, and the other corner store is India, China, etc.
Though I have no doubt this is happening, and will have an impact, I think the fear of "all our IT jobs are leaving" is unfounded.
Not all IT jobs can be outsourced - it depends on the kind of business, the kind of product, and the kind of standards.
It also depends on how much you're willing to move with the times. I've had to change my IT career focus three times in the past 8 years.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Until lazy, asshole consultants realize that they're not worth $150 an hour and college kids become less concerned about PS2 and more concerned about educating themselves, I don't see this trend changing. Americans have all the tools and resources necessary to outdo the rest of the world, in any arena, we just choose not to use them out of sheer laziness.
3 and a half years off with full pay just for having a baby? What the hell? How can you honestly be happy about that? Can't you see that those types of policies are totally irresponsible economically? How the hell is that German company supposed to compete with an American company or a Japanese company that doesn't have such ridiculous policies? Does she get 3.5 years off for each extra kid she has?
Do you not understand that robbing corporations blind is not a good idea? What happens when that company can no longer afford to stay in businessness? Who's going to pay for the mother then? How is Germany going to keep its social programs funded when the tax revenue goes down the drain because no one can afford to employ anyone anymore?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
You are absolutely correct. In fact, most academic discussion of the topic begin with the assumption that the terms are flawed. I was using the lingua franca of the thread. I believe the current terms are "Developed Nations" and "Developing Nations." So the United States has certain key indicators that fit in with Developing Nations more than Developed Nations.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
No, just someone from the US who doesnt mind calling an elephant an elephant. When an (amdittedly imprecise) scientific methology begins to examine some deeply-held convictions, should we at least pause to consider its results?
I was taught at a jesuit university, so I was not exactly dealing with radical leftists, either...
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I am not even aware of the exact number, only that it is dispraportionately high. When so many symptoms of a problem are evident, is it not better to err on the side of jurisprudence?
And the gap is very relevant, because the whole effectiveness of the US socio-economic system depends on the perception of that gap. I feel that if faith in the protestant work ethic and consumer culture falters in the middle class, the internal rot will only worsen.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
We do need one reform. Scrap the visa system. Let any worker who passes security screening come to America.
You can't possibly be serious. What we need is to cut down the number of foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs, not opening the fucking floodgates.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
When the information I see comes from a sampling of introductory level courses in both fields from different schools, it makes an impression. Like when the statistic amounts of "I'm moving to Canada" appear on slashdot, it makes an impression. I apologize for a certain non-methology in my opinions.
Stating a problem and endorsing a solution are two different things. The immigration issue might very well be a cause of the problem, but a problem cannot be solved by going backwards in time, as the culutural crisis of the modern time shows us. But that still leaves us without a solution, because
The economic determinism works, like the economy itself, partly because it is true and partly because people believe it is true. If that faith is ever threatened in the middle class (who are its central support) -- say, through the social/economic ladder havings its rungs removed at the third story -- the results will not be very pleasant.
I guess better solutions might be found if more people saw that the problem was there?
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Loser pays is the holy grail of tort reform on the right. Right now the ATLA crowd have so much tobacco and malpractice money that they can buy the votes to keep loser pays from ever getting passed.
The Bushies are dialing down awards to starve ATLAs legion of check writing lawyers. These are the primary people who fund most anti-reformers, trial lawyers having passed unions as the Democrat's primary cash cow. Once ATLA has been monetarily defanged, the eventual game plan is obviously to trade damage caps (a sub-optimal solution) for loser pays.
Would I like to go directly to loser pays? Yup. But until I see a politically viable way to do it without going through the middle position of damage caps I'll stick to supporting the current push for reform.
I *did* miss the point, and I apologize. Two wage earners makes things different. So, let's take that number I dug up, and chop it in half. $27K/year. For that much, you can buy a $13K car (not bad-- pick up a nice Honda Civic) for 1/2 of it, and an $80K house for less than triple. I'd say we're still in the ballpark of your 1970s numbers. The car is a hair more, but I picked a decent one. You could easily pick up a Kia or something for less than that. An $80K house down the street from me here is a small two-bedroom with garage.
I think this gap is overrated. For starters, it almost doesn't exist if you live somewhere between the coasts. On top of that, today's new houses and new cars aren't exactly comparable with their counterparts from the 1970s. You can't buy a house much smaller than 1200sq. ft. new out here-- but most of the 1970s homes were much smaller.
Eh, I think the "middle" position of caps has far worse ramifications than either loser pays or the present situation, primarily because the States still won't be doing their job of licensing and revoking licenses... sort of like they don't revoke corporate charters even in the case of gross systemic problems at a given "evil" corporation.
After all, the cost of malpractice insurance has remained flat for the last 10 years and the number of doctors has been steadily increasing, not decreasing, even in areas supposedly hurt worst by the current situation (e.g., the Valley in Texas). Thus, unless the industry can show some evidence that a doomsday situation is really around the corner, I'll continue to view their arguments as "chicken little" arguments designed to hedge their profits at the expense of patients and doctors.
I wouldn't have a problem with a well thought out loser pays solution, so long as only frivolous or fraudulant losers had to pay. For example, I don't think the the government should have to pay the ACLU's lawyer fees just b/c some law was ruled unconstitutional... that's just silly. However, former Sen. McGovern should've been able to collect for fees related to defending against the lawsuit where the guy got in a fight on his hotel's premises and sued because "there wasn't enough security".
That sound reasonable to you?
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Well... there is a percentage that are slackers...
:)
But as a Network Admin, I averaged about 70+ hours a week while getting paid for only 40. The overtime was looked upon as REQUIRED, and it only 1/3 of it was ever rewarded in bonuses/raises.
For 3 years in a row, I totalled nearly 450 to 500 hours overtime. My managers response to that was... "Oh the network just runs itself!" or "Some people need more time to manage their workload".
I was not making mega money... I was under the norm. I was finally making 40K after 15 years! Then for my 15th anniversary I was handed my walking papers. Thanks AOL/TW.
I'm 35, and have 20 years experience programming many languages (about 14 or more.. I forget there were so many). I've picked up Perl and Python, and am now teaching myself C++, which I am learning very rapidly.
Although I have experience with Win3x/95/98/NT, Solaris, DG/UX, Linux, and AOS/VS, then programming languages like COBOL, QBASIC, BASICPDS, VB3/4/5, Pascal, Assembler, Many shell languages, form and reporting languages. Networking architectures, RS232/422 cabling, Thick Ethernet, Hubs/Switches/Routers, Server Installs/Upgrades, PC Installs/Upgrades, different TCP/IP protocols, Network software...
I get responses like, your qualifications are impressive... but.. (in other words) we are looking to pay someone not more than 25K.
Sure there are some new very limited skilled programmers (the dinosaur at work calls them Jeeps), but experience does mean trouble shooting experience. You know where the problems in the road lie ahead and plan for it.
This is what those companies are finding out the off-shore can't handle... for the time... so some jobs are coming back. I have seen job offers stating they have already attempted Indy and Philippiny programs, and would like to invest in quality support instead of quantity.
My experience with off-shore is not well. Many times, crucial production runs were just dropped by accident or they were off doing something else. You add up the losses from a few of those dropped balls... and any savings from off-shore now makes on-shore look MUCH more favorable.
budman
If you take a closer look, you'll find that the *vast* majority of US homicides take place in a handful of very small geographical pockets - a few square miles in each of ~20 cities. Exclude those few hot spots, and the overall homicide rate is indistinguishable any other industrialized nation.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Yes, as poor countries raise their standard of living the workers will demand more money. When that happens corporations will do the math and at some point move out of those countries to other under developed countries.
Corporations will exploit cheap labor where ever they can find it until labor costs are approximately the same everywhere.
This will be a good thing for the developing countries and a bad thing for countries that already have a high standard of living with accompanying high cost of living. Jobs in those countries may become hard to find.
You are right when you suggest that we need to find new kinds of jobs but that may be easier said than done. Starting more Mom and Pop businesses will increase jobs but how do they compete with corporations that have the ability to get labor at such low prices?
I'm thinking that at some point we will need to roll our prices and wages back. They may roll back naturally but that's called deflation and that is very painful. I suppose it will all shake out eventually but I don't think that it is going to be very pleasant in the mean time.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Seriously, while I'm sure there's value to a well-run offshore development program for certain kinds of projects, there is an element of faddishness here too. Half-assed companies that can't communicate or manage a project inside a single office have little hope of managing developers 10,000 miles and 12 time-zones away.
-realinvalidname
For a UNIX geek, you sound suspiciously like an overpaid CEO, CFO, or other such low life. I look forward to when these jobs are exported as well. Nobody is worth millions of dollars a year, regardless of what they do.
I'm a low life because I actually understand economics? Go watch A Beautiful Mind a few times, and study the part where Nash discovers his equilibrium.
There are plenty of people in Afganistan; I'm sure many are qualified to do your job at a mere fraction of what you're being paid. What, you were laid off?!
In one sentence you call me and overpaid C*O, then you ask if I was laid off? I see you added me to your foes list, which I could care less about. I only care about discussing things with people who are able to reason, so it suits me fine. But, did you put any thought into this comment? Did you just see, "He's saying that Americans jobs are better off overseas?" and freak out?
Seriously, put some thought into your life. Understand that there is no quality of life being lost. It's called economics, and it has happened 4 times in the last 100 years.
I'm saying what I'm saying because I know, and study how these systems work. There are good reasons why I'm not unemployed, and you people would do good from actually listening and researching further what I'm saying instead of arguing with over-reactive statements, like this: "Then die or move to Somalia"
You know, there is a big difference between Somalia and India. But, I'm sure you knew that and that is why you posted it... or something.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
It would not make business sense to replace 399 productive full time equivalents (FTEs) with 399 people to sit and do nothing while a 400th does the work of one FTE. Yet, that is what is going on. This is bleeding the U.S. IT sector dry. It is also very damaging to the rest of th U.S. economy. In other words, harmful to the U.S. national interests (assuming maintaining a viable IT sector is one of them).
Adjusting executive compensation to merely 2 or 3 times that of the average employee would keep hundreds on staff. Anything less could be considered by some to be seditious or anti-American.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
A foreigner that gets a visa to work in your country contributes to the local economy by demanding goods and services and paying taxes.
A foreigner that works in his own country for the same company contributes far less to your country's economy (appart from the increase in profits for you country's company, but in a well managed company those should not be too different).
So I believe any goverment that adjusts policies to the eonomic realities of this world (i.e. there are many programmers that work for less than programmers in the US) is doing a service to its people by not living in denial of the worldwide market forces.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or do you like it only when it benefits you?
Market forces dictate that people offering a good (whatever that good is) cheaper will sell more of it driving out of business thet people that sell the same good more expensive.
All you pseudo-patriotic considerations are completely devoid of any basis on economic realities, the reality is that there are many people willing to do the same work for less. You either adapt (specialize in a niche market, do something else, charge less) or will be left behind waving your flag while claiming unemployment benefits.
Capitalism for you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... by maintaining the local economy strong.
All those workers could work as well in thei won country in many cases, thus the US economy would not collect any taxes from them and the respective local economies would not benefit from those workers spending in the US.
If you prefer them to work in their home countries, so be it, but the jobs are going to go to people more skilled, willing to work for less or that are in the right spot where both of those curves intersect. You can have them at home or half world away, your country's choice really, as long as we have free markets other people outside the US could be the best ones for certain jobs.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When many of your basic industries (agriculture, cleaning, rubish collection, etc) collapse because you find nobody willing to do it, then you'll have a lot of explaining to do to all the affected people (and lets forget about lost business and loss of tax revenue due to what immigrant contribute to ytour economy).
Stop them, I beg you.
Xenophobic morons, all are the same.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And if you only take into account my bathroom the crime rate is 0%, unless you wish to add all the dead bacteria to your wonderful statistics.
I will not bother you with why cities as big as Tokyo, London or Berlin do not suffer the same problem; that would be too much to ask from your brain.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What do you do when the American product SUCKS in comparison to the foreign made product? I'm talking about cars here. American companies have to offer folks 5 years of free financing in order to get people to even come into the car lots. Asian automakers can simply charge their regular prices. Why? A Ford/GM/Crysler (Crysler is German now btw) will break down before a Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan will.
This is why American cars sell for less when new, and sell for less when used. People tend to want to hold onto their high quality foreign cars. So should we still buy American when it comes to cars? Or should we let the market continue to apply pressure to those companies who make products that suck?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
What are you going to do when the field of robotics advances and jobs don't even need to be outsourced anymore because huge warehouses full of robots are now doing all the jobs. Should we outlaw the usage of robots then?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The economies of the UK, France, Germany, Japan and many other looked mighty healthy after WWII.
That all the economic growth happend while they were at their longest period without killing each other must be a fucking coincidence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
German companies are outsourcing too. All of Western Europe is. AND Germany has higher rates of unemployment than the US does. So what was so good about Germany again?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
And the eonomies of te countries involved looked mightly healty in 1946....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If the economy grows there is no recession.
The classical definition of recession implies a contraction in growth.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Today the US is the biggest consumer of Iraqi oil (which find its way through third parties).
Today's oil price was fixed in the futures markets: it his high because when oil was sold several months ago the perception of the people is that oil was going to be high (everybody knew that around this time they may be war, but of course nobody has a cristal ball so it may seem to the uniinitiated like they are just hiking the price now, it is amazing that they got it so right actually).
I am sure you realize that before we can use oil it has to be transfromed, if it is sitting on a tanker it is of little use to the average person...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
..." one of our biggest problems is finding employees who are willing to work for us" you can;t understand?
And how do you blame that in foreigners (legal or otherwise)?
They are paying, don't you get it? People do not want to do those shitty jobs...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What are you going to do when the field of robotics advances and jobs don't even need to be outsourced anymore because huge warehouses full of robots are now doing all the jobs. Should we outlaw the usage of robots then?
This is so far from being a reality that to suggest this as a possible problem is laughable.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
... German workers are as highly rated, normally better, than their counterparts in other developped countries.
If the country is producing it can afford some largesse when dishing out benefits (some are arguably outlandish, but 3 years maternity leave to reasr a child seems reasonable to me).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is well known that leftist normally learn their trad in Universities.
Try again, you may amuse us next time.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
their economy was never destroyed by a war (not to mention 2 wars)
Europe was revaged by the 2 wars that I think you're talking about, and they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. So does Japan. What's your point?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Oh really? There are already burger flipping robots around. Its just most fastfood managers don't know enough about them to order them yet. What happens when you can't even get a job as a burger flipper? Should we introduce legislation against bots then?
The number of people needed per factory decreases every year that goes by. Why is it so hard for you to see that this is where we are headed?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
America's wealth and power is a combination of a decent political system, some enlightened policies in the 19th and 20th century, and lucky historical accident.
Right. Policies that protected our interests. Policies that wouldn't have worked if we would have let cheap labor flow freely to and from countries without such policies. Policies that are still in effect and are socially and morally better than the free for all the existed before. Policies that were only created because Americans felt it important enough to fight (and die) for. And I'm not talking about war. I'm talking about the war of labor against the bosses. A fight that the folks in the sweat shops haven't fought yet.
Nobody is entitled to wealth, and certainly not because of their ancestry or historical accident. You get what you get. Count yourself lucky that you were born in such a wealthy country, but don't expect it to last--it never does.
But you expect me to just sit back and let it happen? I have every right to protect my interests and to do whatever protects my and my country's interests. When we have a true world government and everyone has to work by the same rules and playing field, then fine, let regulated capitalism work, but until then, I'm going to protect the freedoms I enjoy. Freedoms like, freedom from oppressive employers.
And as for me benefiting from the hard work of my ancestors. Haven't you ever heard of the phrase, "I'm doing this for my children, and my children's children."? They did it for me. They worked for me. And I must continue that tradition and work to protect this great nation for my children and their children.
No one is entitled to anything but freedom. And I'm going to use that freedom.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
There are plenty of people in Afganistan; I'm sure many are qualified to do your job at a mere fraction of what you're being paid.
Yep, those afghanis a threatening to take all the IT jobs away from US geeks. Considering they haven't had internet access since the Taliban took over. Not to worry though, almost nobody there could have afforded a computer anyways. And where would they plug it in? "Hey Akbar - let's wire up the ol' cave for electricity tonight!"
Government IS the problem.
Can you get stats that show that the median income in the 70's was based on a certain percentage of double vs single incomes and compare that to today's number? Thanks.
IANAL, but I play one on
Burger-flipping robots? Muhahaha!
Seriously, this has got to be a joke.
Burger-flipping robots? Prove it.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Of course it works, but Americans now have to buy motorcycles that cost 1.45 times the optimal price. And in that fashion everyone wants "protection". The end result is that your costs are higher that in the rest of the world, you can't compete and have to start hiring elsewhere...
Also, you have a lot of rich people buying homes as an investment, of course real state prices will rise and you'll again have a problem beign competitive.
One nice solution is to move somewhere else, really.
unfinished: (adj.)
I'm thinking that at some point we will need to roll our prices and wages back.
Maybe the problem is not so much lowering salaries, but lowering cost of living there (housing, food, taxes). No other country is pending so much in defense. And real state prices are up because after a booble everyone flies from stocks into real state. So you can't find a home for a decent price.
unfinished: (adj.)
I don't know if the price of property is over inflated or not. There is probably a large variance based on location. I do know that so far interest rates are very low so unless the property value is way over inflated, now is a good time to get locked into a fixed rate.
The idea of rolling back wages and prices (and property values) is so that moving a corporations operation out of country isn't such a temptation.
It's funny that the idea is to get the lowest cost of production and sell for the highest profit but by moving to under developed counties these corporations will also be destroying the ability of the developed countries to pay top dollar.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Of course it works, but Americans now have to buy motorcycles that cost 1.45 times the optimal price.
Untrue. The tariff was lifted in 1987 when Harley Davidson got back on solid financial footing. In fact, Harley Davidson requested that the tariff be lifted in 1987, one year earlier than it was scheduled to expire.
The end result is that your costs are higher that in the rest of the world
But that's okay as long as a company is profitable. I'm not pissed off at companies that go overseas in order to keep their business viable. I am pissed off at U.S. companies (like Microsoft) which are wildly profitable and choose to replace U.S. workers in order to realize even higher profits.
, you can't compete and have to start hiring elsewhere...
You use phrases like "can't compete" and "have to." This is not the absolute that you would make it out to be. Look at Harley. While I hate their products, by 1999, they commanded a 56% share of large motorcycle sales. Even in Japan, Harley is the sales leader for large motorcycles, outselling such brands as Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha in that segment. They they did not "have to start hiring elsewhere." Their bikes are largely assembled right in the U.S.A.
Well, I kinda agree. But it cannot be generalized because in that case your costs get much higher. Protection must be handled with care. Microsoft is not only sucking USA blood...they are sucking everyone's blood.
unfinished: (adj.)
It's funny that the idea is to get the lowest cost of production and sell for the highest profit but by moving to under developed counties these corporations will also be destroying the ability of the developed countries to pay top dollar.
But the idea is to have competing firms (ideally, perfect competition) so that they cannot have any other profit besides normal profits (that is: salaries + interests to capital + management costs).
Now, if Indians really can do your job for half the price, then the problem will be here to stay. Sure, you can try to force companies to use US labour, but who'd want to use suck software? You'll also need to mandate local companies to buy local software, while the rest can use cheaper alternatives?
unfinished: (adj.)
Microsoft is not only sucking USA blood...they are sucking everyone's blood.
Ignoring the ethical questions and being totally pragmatic, that's how it should work. The best thing for U.S. citizens is U.S. companies selling goods and services to foreign countries and using the money from those foreign sales to pay U.S. workers. Those workers then spend the money in the U.S. to buy other goods and services. That keeps the economy humming along nicely.
Well, the rest of the world does not want their blood sucked either, so they will eventually react. When that day comes, it will be irrelevant if Microsoft wants or does not want to use Indian workers, they will have no choice :-)
unfinished: (adj.)
Well, the rest of the world does not want their blood sucked either, so they will eventually react.
:-)
It's already happening. Many countries are considering open source alternatives to Microsoft products and I'm glad that they are doing so.
When that day comes, it will be irrelevant if Microsoft wants or does not want to use Indian workers, they will have no choice
Sure they will have a choice. Microsoft could cut the price of Windows and Office by 50% and still be wildly profitable. They are greedy bastards. They have more money than many small countries and, instead of using it to keep U.S. workers employed, they are bringing in H1-B visa workers to exploit with below-market wages.
I understand what you are saying and from the corporation's point of view it is exactly right. However, the equation is more complicated than that.
From the corporation's side, the path to maximum profit is the way to go. It's perhaps a little more complicated than that, as corporations are willing to take a loss of profit to gain market share that will lead to maximum profit at a later date.
The worker's point of view is exactly like the corporation's point of view except that the worker has minimal power in wage negotiations. This is particularly true in the current situation where you have underdeveloped countries with workers who are willing to work for practically nothing.
One might say that this is a truly free market so it's okay. However, although it is true that it is a free market it is also true that the market is immature and there are great regional inequities in the living standards and therefore in the amount of wages required to survive.
There is a finite pool of wealth in the world. It is a vast amount but still it is finite. The scary thing is that in a corporate world there is only one goal: The accumulation of as much of the wealth pool as possible. This is true for the corporations and the workers. Everyone is trying to get as much of the wealth pool as possible. However, the corporations are in control so they have a huge advantage over the workers and so two classes of people emerge; the few very rich and the many very poor. The few very rich are the ones who succeed in getting more than their share of the wealth pool and the many very poor are the powerless that are exploited for the sake of the few very rich.
The only defense that the workers have to prevent this situation is to ban together in unions. However, in the current situation with under developed countries this is not possible. It is not in the best interests of workers in the under developed countries to strike for the sake of the workers in the developed countries and if the workers in the developed countries strike the corporations are even more motivated to move operations to the under developed countries.
If left to follow its course, the global situation would eventually stabilize and workers could unionize on a global scale to help counter balance the corporation's power. This could take a very long time, however and the corporations have learned to use (lobby and bribe) our politicians to maintain their advantages so the system is not going to be allowed to work.
The job of any democratic government is to do for the people the things that the people cannot do for themselves without government help. If our government were working as it should then it would be responsive to the masses rather than special interests. Unfortunately the politicians work under the same "gather wealth/power" creed as everyone else so it actually becomes part of the problem rather than the solution.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
>>You understand now why I consider your "kind" stupid?
My 'kind'? What the fuck do you know about me? My company is one people around here have never heard of. You wouldn't have a clue who we were.
They are stable and have been profitable for 15 years, which is why I took this job. At the time, IPOs were setting records, but I am still gainfully employed.
If I wasn't and I couldn't find a local job, I would not be living here.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
I tend to agree. But until the workers of the world start to realize capitalists don't give a damn about countries, so they shouldn't give a damn about them either, we are fucked up.
You see, you are happy if greedy corporations pay you for a higher standard of living just for doing the same job some Indians could do, so you feel a real american. And when they don't favour you, you don't like the system anymore.
The thing I wish people could realize is that we should care about ideals (respect private property, respect religions, respect democracy, etc), and not countries. Capitalism bribes "just enough" countries to keep on growing. I mean, capitalism is great, but you have to give equal oportunities to everybody based on merrits, not on where they are born. (I am also a little bit against inheritance)
unfinished: (adj.)
Because you used to be a third world shithole that polluted our collective environments, and now it's somebody else's turn.
If you don't want to participate in the world, it's understandable. However, try not to play the victim here. Leadership requires sacrifices.
We have an unsurpassed system of healthcare.
Don't confuse medical expertise (people fly here to get operations) with the health care system (bringing affordable medical care to everybody), just as you shouldn't confuse technical expertise (people flying here to study) with the education system (bringing affordable education to everybody).
The US leads the world in many areas of medicine. However, the health care system is in severe trouble.